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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland] | [TOKENS: 856] |
Contents Highland Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally, upland refers to a range of hills, typically from 300 m (980 ft) up to 600 m (2,000 ft), while highland is usually reserved for ranges of low mountains. However, the two terms are interchangeable and also include regions that are transitional between hilly and mountainous terrain. Highlands internationally Probably the best-known area officially or unofficially referred to as highlands in the Anglosphere is the Scottish Highlands in northern Scotland, the mountainous region north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault. The Highland council area is a local government area in the Scottish Highlands and Britain's largest local government area. Other highland or upland areas reaching 400 m or higher in the United Kingdom include the Southern Uplands in Scotland, the Pennines, North York Moors, Dartmoor and Exmoor in England, and the Cambrian Mountains in Wales. Many countries and regions also have areas referred to as highlands. These include parts of Afghanistan, Tibet, Ethiopia, Canada, Kenya, Eritrea, Yemen, Ghana, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Syria, Turkey and Cantabria. Similar terms used in other countries include high country, used in New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Southern Queensland in Australia, and parts of the United States (notably Western North Carolina), highveld, used in South Africa and Roof of the World, used for Tibet. The central Afghan highlands are in the center of Afghanistan, mostly located between 2,000 and 3,000 m above sea level. They have a very cold winter, and a short and cool summer. These highlands have mountain pastures during summer (sardsīr), watered by many small streams and rivers. There are also pastures available during winter in the neighboring warm lowlands (garmsīr), which makes the region ideal for seasonal transhumance. The highlands in Australia are often above the elevation of 500 m. These areas often receive snowfall in winter. Most of the highlands lead up to large alpine or sub-alpine mountainous regions such as the Australian Alps, Snowy Mountains, Great Dividing Range, Northern Tablelands and Blue Mountains. The most mountainous region of Tasmania is the Central Highlands area, which covers most of the central-western parts of the state. Many of these areas are highly elevated alpine regions. The Ozarks cover nearly 120,000 square kilometres (46,000 sq mi), making it the most extensive highland region between the Appalachians and Rockies. This region contains some of the oldest rocks in North America. The spine of the mountains stretches across the island of New Guinea, forming the densely populated highlands of Papua New Guinea, and the Highland Papua, Indonesia. The Central Highlands of Sri Lanka are rain forests, where the elevation reaches 2,500 m (8,200 ft) above sea level. The Sri Lanka montane rain forests represent the montane and submontane moist forests above 1,000 m (3,300 ft) in the central highlands and in the Knuckles mountain range. Half of Sri Lanka's endemic flowering plants and 51 percent of the endemic vertebrates are restricted to this ecoregion. The highlands of Iceland cover about 40% of the country and are mostly inhospitable to humans. They are generally considered to be any land above 500 m. The mountainous natural region of the Thai highlands is found in Northern Thailand. The Cameron Highlands is a highland area and hill station in Pahang, Malaysia. Shillong in India in the state of Meghalaya is a hill station that is surrounded by highlands. Officers of the British Raj referred to Shillong as "The Scotland of the East". Other planets Highland continents—or terrae—are areas of topographically unstable terrain, with high peaks and valleys. They resemble highlands on Earth, but the term is applied to much larger areas on other planets. They can be found on Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Moon. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MNE-Python] | [TOKENS: 61] |
Contents MNE-Python MNE-Python ("MNE") is an open source toolbox for EEG and MEG signal processing. It is written in Python and is available from the PyPI package repository. See also References This scientific software article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal#cite_note-Concepts-20] | [TOKENS: 6011] |
Contents Animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms belonging to the biological kingdom Animalia (/ˌænɪˈmeɪliə/). With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Animals form a clade, meaning that they arose from a single common ancestor. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. Animal body lengths range from 8.5 μm (0.00033 in) to 33.6 m (110 ft). They have complex ecologies and interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known as zoology, and the study of animal behaviour is known as ethology. The animal kingdom is divided into five major clades, namely Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa, Cnidaria and Bilateria. Most living animal species belong to the clade Bilateria, a highly proliferative clade whose members have a bilaterally symmetric and significantly cephalised body plan, and the vast majority of bilaterians belong to two large clades: the protostomes, which includes organisms such as arthropods, molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes; and the deuterostomes, which include echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the latter of which contains the vertebrates. The much smaller basal phylum Xenacoelomorpha have an uncertain position within Bilateria. Animals first appeared in the fossil record in the late Cryogenian period and diversified in the subsequent Ediacaran period in what is known as the Avalon explosion. Nearly all modern animal phyla first appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, which began around 539 million years ago (Mya), and most classes during the Ordovician radiation 485.4 Mya. Common to all living animals, 6,331 groups of genes have been identified that may have arisen from a single common ancestor that lived about 650 Mya during the Cryogenian period. Historically, Aristotle divided animals into those with blood and those without. Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical biological classification for animals in 1758 with his Systema Naturae, which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck expanded into 14 phyla by 1809. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the multicellular Metazoa (now synonymous with Animalia) and the Protozoa, single-celled organisms no longer considered animals. In modern times, the biological classification of animals relies on advanced techniques, such as molecular phylogenetics, which are effective at demonstrating the evolutionary relationships between taxa. Humans make use of many other animal species for food (including meat, eggs, and dairy products), for materials (such as leather, fur, and wool), as pets and as working animals for transportation, and services. Dogs, the first domesticated animal, have been used in hunting, in security and in warfare, as have horses, pigeons and birds of prey; while other terrestrial and aquatic animals are hunted for sports, trophies or profits. Non-human animals are also an important cultural element of human evolution, having appeared in cave arts and totems since the earliest times, and are frequently featured in mythology, religion, arts, literature, heraldry, politics, and sports. Etymology The word animal comes from the Latin noun animal of the same meaning, which is itself derived from Latin animalis 'having breath or soul'. The biological definition includes all members of the kingdom Animalia. In colloquial usage, the term animal is often used to refer only to nonhuman animals. The term metazoa is derived from Ancient Greek μετα meta 'after' (in biology, the prefix meta- stands for 'later') and ζῷᾰ zōia 'animals', plural of ζῷον zōion 'animal'. A metazoan is any member of the group Metazoa. Characteristics Animals have several characteristics that they share with other living things. Animals are eukaryotic, multicellular, and aerobic, as are plants and fungi. Unlike plants and algae, which produce their own food, animals cannot produce their own food, a feature they share with fungi. Animals ingest organic material and digest it internally. Animals have structural characteristics that set them apart from all other living things: Typically, there is an internal digestive chamber with either one opening (in Ctenophora, Cnidaria, and flatworms) or two openings (in most bilaterians). Animal development is controlled by Hox genes, which signal the times and places to develop structures such as body segments and limbs. During development, the animal extracellular matrix forms a relatively flexible framework upon which cells can move about and be reorganised into specialised tissues and organs, making the formation of complex structures possible, and allowing cells to be differentiated. The extracellular matrix may be calcified, forming structures such as shells, bones, and spicules. In contrast, the cells of other multicellular organisms (primarily algae, plants, and fungi) are held in place by cell walls, and so develop by progressive growth. Nearly all animals make use of some form of sexual reproduction. They produce haploid gametes by meiosis; the smaller, motile gametes are spermatozoa and the larger, non-motile gametes are ova. These fuse to form zygotes, which develop via mitosis into a hollow sphere, called a blastula. In sponges, blastula larvae swim to a new location, attach to the seabed, and develop into a new sponge. In most other groups, the blastula undergoes more complicated rearrangement. It first invaginates to form a gastrula with a digestive chamber and two separate germ layers, an external ectoderm and an internal endoderm. In most cases, a third germ layer, the mesoderm, also develops between them. These germ layers then differentiate to form tissues and organs. Repeated instances of mating with a close relative during sexual reproduction generally leads to inbreeding depression within a population due to the increased prevalence of harmful recessive traits. Animals have evolved numerous mechanisms for avoiding close inbreeding. Some animals are capable of asexual reproduction, which often results in a genetic clone of the parent. This may take place through fragmentation; budding, such as in Hydra and other cnidarians; or parthenogenesis, where fertile eggs are produced without mating, such as in aphids. Ecology Animals are categorised into ecological groups depending on their trophic levels and how they consume organic material. Such groupings include carnivores (further divided into subcategories such as piscivores, insectivores, ovivores, etc.), herbivores (subcategorised into folivores, graminivores, frugivores, granivores, nectarivores, algivores, etc.), omnivores, fungivores, scavengers/detritivores, and parasites. Interactions between animals of each biome form complex food webs within that ecosystem. In carnivorous or omnivorous species, predation is a consumer–resource interaction where the predator feeds on another organism, its prey, who often evolves anti-predator adaptations to avoid being fed upon. Selective pressures imposed on one another lead to an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, resulting in various antagonistic/competitive coevolutions. Almost all multicellular predators are animals. Some consumers use multiple methods; for example, in parasitoid wasps, the larvae feed on the hosts' living tissues, killing them in the process, but the adults primarily consume nectar from flowers. Other animals may have very specific feeding behaviours, such as hawksbill sea turtles which mainly eat sponges. Most animals rely on biomass and bioenergy produced by plants and phytoplanktons (collectively called producers) through photosynthesis. Herbivores, as primary consumers, eat the plant material directly to digest and absorb the nutrients, while carnivores and other animals on higher trophic levels indirectly acquire the nutrients by eating the herbivores or other animals that have eaten the herbivores. Animals oxidise carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and other biomolecules in cellular respiration, which allows the animal to grow and to sustain basal metabolism and fuel other biological processes such as locomotion. Some benthic animals living close to hydrothermal vents and cold seeps on the dark sea floor consume organic matter produced through chemosynthesis (via oxidising inorganic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide) by archaea and bacteria. Animals originated in the ocean; all extant animal phyla, except for Micrognathozoa and Onychophora, feature at least some marine species. However, several lineages of arthropods begun to colonise land around the same time as land plants, probably between 510 and 471 million years ago, during the Late Cambrian or Early Ordovician. Vertebrates such as the lobe-finned fish Tiktaalik started to move on to land in the late Devonian, about 375 million years ago. Other notable animal groups that colonized land environments are Mollusca, Platyhelmintha, Annelida, Tardigrada, Onychophora, Rotifera, Nematoda. Animals occupy virtually all of earth's habitats and microhabitats, with faunas adapted to salt water, hydrothermal vents, fresh water, hot springs, swamps, forests, pastures, deserts, air, and the interiors of other organisms. Animals are however not particularly heat tolerant; very few of them can survive at constant temperatures above 50 °C (122 °F) or in the most extreme cold deserts of continental Antarctica. The collective global geomorphic influence of animals on the processes shaping the Earth's surface remains largely understudied, with most studies limited to individual species and well-known exemplars. Diversity The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is the largest animal that has ever lived, weighing up to 190 tonnes and measuring up to 33.6 metres (110 ft) long. The largest extant terrestrial animal is the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), weighing up to 12.25 tonnes and measuring up to 10.67 metres (35.0 ft) long. The largest terrestrial animals that ever lived were titanosaur sauropod dinosaurs such as Argentinosaurus, which may have weighed as much as 73 tonnes, and Supersaurus which may have reached 39 metres. Several animals are microscopic; some Myxozoa (obligate parasites within the Cnidaria) never grow larger than 20 μm, and one of the smallest species (Myxobolus shekel) is no more than 8.5 μm when fully grown. The following table lists estimated numbers of described extant species for the major animal phyla, along with their principal habitats (terrestrial, fresh water, and marine), and free-living or parasitic ways of life. Species estimates shown here are based on numbers described scientifically; much larger estimates have been calculated based on various means of prediction, and these can vary wildly. For instance, around 25,000–27,000 species of nematodes have been described, while published estimates of the total number of nematode species include 10,000–20,000; 500,000; 10 million; and 100 million. Using patterns within the taxonomic hierarchy, the total number of animal species—including those not yet described—was calculated to be about 7.77 million in 2011.[a] 3,000–6,500 4,000–25,000 Evolutionary origin Evidence of animals is found as long ago as the Cryogenian period. 24-Isopropylcholestane (24-ipc) has been found in rocks from roughly 650 million years ago; it is only produced by sponges and pelagophyte algae. Its likely origin is from sponges based on molecular clock estimates for the origin of 24-ipc production in both groups. Analyses of pelagophyte algae consistently recover a Phanerozoic origin, while analyses of sponges recover a Neoproterozoic origin, consistent with the appearance of 24-ipc in the fossil record. The first body fossils of animals appear in the Ediacaran, represented by forms such as Charnia and Spriggina. It had long been doubted whether these fossils truly represented animals, but the discovery of the animal lipid cholesterol in fossils of Dickinsonia establishes their nature. Animals are thought to have originated under low-oxygen conditions, suggesting that they were capable of living entirely by anaerobic respiration, but as they became specialised for aerobic metabolism they became fully dependent on oxygen in their environments. Many animal phyla first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion, starting about 539 million years ago, in beds such as the Burgess Shale. Extant phyla in these rocks include molluscs, brachiopods, onychophorans, tardigrades, arthropods, echinoderms and hemichordates, along with numerous now-extinct forms such as the predatory Anomalocaris. The apparent suddenness of the event may however be an artefact of the fossil record, rather than showing that all these animals appeared simultaneously. That view is supported by the discovery of Auroralumina attenboroughii, the earliest known Ediacaran crown-group cnidarian (557–562 mya, some 20 million years before the Cambrian explosion) from Charnwood Forest, England. It is thought to be one of the earliest predators, catching small prey with its nematocysts as modern cnidarians do. Some palaeontologists have suggested that animals appeared much earlier than the Cambrian explosion, possibly as early as 1 billion years ago. Early fossils that might represent animals appear for example in the 665-million-year-old rocks of the Trezona Formation of South Australia. These fossils are interpreted as most probably being early sponges. Trace fossils such as tracks and burrows found in the Tonian period (from 1 gya) may indicate the presence of triploblastic worm-like animals, roughly as large (about 5 mm wide) and complex as earthworms. However, similar tracks are produced by the giant single-celled protist Gromia sphaerica, so the Tonian trace fossils may not indicate early animal evolution. Around the same time, the layered mats of microorganisms called stromatolites decreased in diversity, perhaps due to grazing by newly evolved animals. Objects such as sediment-filled tubes that resemble trace fossils of the burrows of wormlike animals have been found in 1.2 gya rocks in North America, in 1.5 gya rocks in Australia and North America, and in 1.7 gya rocks in Australia. Their interpretation as having an animal origin is disputed, as they might be water-escape or other structures. Phylogeny Animals are monophyletic, meaning they are derived from a common ancestor. Animals are the sister group to the choanoflagellates, with which they form the Choanozoa. Ros-Rocher and colleagues (2021) trace the origins of animals to unicellular ancestors, providing the external phylogeny shown in the cladogram. Uncertainty of relationships is indicated with dashed lines. The animal clade had certainly originated by 650 mya, and may have come into being as much as 800 mya, based on molecular clock evidence for different phyla. Holomycota (inc. fungi) Ichthyosporea Pluriformea Filasterea The relationships at the base of the animal tree have been debated. Other than Ctenophora, the Bilateria and Cnidaria are the only groups with symmetry, and other evidence shows they are closely related. In addition to sponges, Placozoa has no symmetry and was often considered a "missing link" between protists and multicellular animals. The presence of hox genes in Placozoa shows that they were once more complex. The Porifera (sponges) have long been assumed to be sister to the rest of the animals, but there is evidence that the Ctenophora may be in that position. Molecular phylogenetics has supported both the sponge-sister and ctenophore-sister hypotheses. In 2017, Roberto Feuda and colleagues, using amino acid differences, presented both, with the following cladogram for the sponge-sister view that they supported (their ctenophore-sister tree simply interchanging the places of ctenophores and sponges): Porifera Ctenophora Placozoa Cnidaria Bilateria Conversely, a 2023 study by Darrin Schultz and colleagues uses ancient gene linkages to construct the following ctenophore-sister phylogeny: Ctenophora Porifera Placozoa Cnidaria Bilateria Sponges are physically very distinct from other animals, and were long thought to have diverged first, representing the oldest animal phylum and forming a sister clade to all other animals. Despite their morphological dissimilarity with all other animals, genetic evidence suggests sponges may be more closely related to other animals than the comb jellies are. Sponges lack the complex organisation found in most other animal phyla; their cells are differentiated, but in most cases not organised into distinct tissues, unlike all other animals. They typically feed by drawing in water through pores, filtering out small particles of food. The Ctenophora and Cnidaria are radially symmetric and have digestive chambers with a single opening, which serves as both mouth and anus. Animals in both phyla have distinct tissues, but these are not organised into discrete organs. They are diploblastic, having only two main germ layers, ectoderm and endoderm. The tiny placozoans have no permanent digestive chamber and no symmetry; they superficially resemble amoebae. Their phylogeny is poorly defined, and under active research. The remaining animals, the great majority—comprising some 29 phyla and over a million species—form the Bilateria clade, which have a bilaterally symmetric body plan. The Bilateria are triploblastic, with three well-developed germ layers, and their tissues form distinct organs. The digestive chamber has two openings, a mouth and an anus, and in the Nephrozoa there is an internal body cavity, a coelom or pseudocoelom. These animals have a head end (anterior) and a tail end (posterior), a back (dorsal) surface and a belly (ventral) surface, and a left and a right side. A modern consensus phylogenetic tree for the Bilateria is shown below. Xenacoelomorpha Ambulacraria Chordata Ecdysozoa Spiralia Having a front end means that this part of the body encounters stimuli, such as food, favouring cephalisation, the development of a head with sense organs and a mouth. Many bilaterians have a combination of circular muscles that constrict the body, making it longer, and an opposing set of longitudinal muscles, that shorten the body; these enable soft-bodied animals with a hydrostatic skeleton to move by peristalsis. They also have a gut that extends through the basically cylindrical body from mouth to anus. Many bilaterian phyla have primary larvae which swim with cilia and have an apical organ containing sensory cells. However, over evolutionary time, descendant spaces have evolved which have lost one or more of each of these characteristics. For example, adult echinoderms are radially symmetric (unlike their larvae), while some parasitic worms have extremely simplified body structures. Genetic studies have considerably changed zoologists' understanding of the relationships within the Bilateria. Most appear to belong to two major lineages, the protostomes and the deuterostomes. It is often suggested that the basalmost bilaterians are the Xenacoelomorpha, with all other bilaterians belonging to the subclade Nephrozoa. However, this suggestion has been contested, with other studies finding that xenacoelomorphs are more closely related to Ambulacraria than to other bilaterians. Protostomes and deuterostomes differ in several ways. Early in development, deuterostome embryos undergo radial cleavage during cell division, while many protostomes (the Spiralia) undergo spiral cleavage. Animals from both groups possess a complete digestive tract, but in protostomes the first opening of the embryonic gut develops into the mouth, and the anus forms secondarily. In deuterostomes, the anus forms first while the mouth develops secondarily. Most protostomes have schizocoelous development, where cells simply fill in the interior of the gastrula to form the mesoderm. In deuterostomes, the mesoderm forms by enterocoelic pouching, through invagination of the endoderm. The main deuterostome taxa are the Ambulacraria and the Chordata. Ambulacraria are exclusively marine and include acorn worms, starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. The chordates are dominated by the vertebrates (animals with backbones), which consist of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The protostomes include the Ecdysozoa, named after their shared trait of ecdysis, growth by moulting, Among the largest ecdysozoan phyla are the arthropods and the nematodes. The rest of the protostomes are in the Spiralia, named for their pattern of developing by spiral cleavage in the early embryo. Major spiralian phyla include the annelids and molluscs. History of classification In the classical era, Aristotle divided animals,[d] based on his own observations, into those with blood (roughly, the vertebrates) and those without. The animals were then arranged on a scale from man (with blood, two legs, rational soul) down through the live-bearing tetrapods (with blood, four legs, sensitive soul) and other groups such as crustaceans (no blood, many legs, sensitive soul) down to spontaneously generating creatures like sponges (no blood, no legs, vegetable soul). Aristotle was uncertain whether sponges were animals, which in his system ought to have sensation, appetite, and locomotion, or plants, which did not: he knew that sponges could sense touch and would contract if about to be pulled off their rocks, but that they were rooted like plants and never moved about. In 1758, Carl Linnaeus created the first hierarchical classification in his Systema Naturae. In his original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then, the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, the Chordata, while his Insecta (which included the crustaceans and arachnids) and Vermes have been renamed or broken up. The process was begun in 1793 by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, who called the Vermes une espèce de chaos ('a chaotic mess')[e] and split the group into three new phyla: worms, echinoderms, and polyps (which contained corals and jellyfish). By 1809, in his Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck had created nine phyla apart from vertebrates (where he still had four phyla: mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish) and molluscs, namely cirripedes, annelids, crustaceans, arachnids, insects, worms, radiates, polyps, and infusorians. In his 1817 Le Règne Animal, Georges Cuvier used comparative anatomy to group the animals into four embranchements ('branches' with different body plans, roughly corresponding to phyla), namely vertebrates, molluscs, articulated animals (arthropods and annelids), and zoophytes (radiata) (echinoderms, cnidaria and other forms). This division into four was followed by the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer in 1828, the zoologist Louis Agassiz in 1857, and the comparative anatomist Richard Owen in 1860. In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms: Metazoa (multicellular animals, with five phyla: coelenterates, echinoderms, articulates, molluscs, and vertebrates) and Protozoa (single-celled animals), including a sixth animal phylum, sponges. The protozoa were later moved to the former kingdom Protista, leaving only the Metazoa as a synonym of Animalia. In human culture The human population exploits a large number of other animal species for food, both of domesticated livestock species in animal husbandry and, mainly at sea, by hunting wild species. Marine fish of many species are caught commercially for food. A smaller number of species are farmed commercially. Humans and their livestock make up more than 90% of the biomass of all terrestrial vertebrates, and almost as much as all insects combined. Invertebrates including cephalopods, crustaceans, insects—principally bees and silkworms—and bivalve or gastropod molluscs are hunted or farmed for food, fibres. Chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs, and other animals are raised as livestock for meat across the world. Animal fibres such as wool and silk are used to make textiles, while animal sinews have been used as lashings and bindings, and leather is widely used to make shoes and other items. Animals have been hunted and farmed for their fur to make items such as coats and hats. Dyestuffs including carmine (cochineal), shellac, and kermes have been made from the bodies of insects. Working animals including cattle and horses have been used for work and transport from the first days of agriculture. Animals such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster serve a major role in science as experimental models. Animals have been used to create vaccines since their discovery in the 18th century. Some medicines such as the cancer drug trabectedin are based on toxins or other molecules of animal origin. People have used hunting dogs to help chase down and retrieve animals, and birds of prey to catch birds and mammals, while tethered cormorants have been used to catch fish. Poison dart frogs have been used to poison the tips of blowpipe darts. A wide variety of animals are kept as pets, from invertebrates such as tarantulas, octopuses, and praying mantises, reptiles such as snakes and chameleons, and birds including canaries, parakeets, and parrots all finding a place. However, the most kept pet species are mammals, namely dogs, cats, and rabbits. There is a tension between the role of animals as companions to humans, and their existence as individuals with rights of their own. A wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic animals are hunted for sport. The signs of the Western and Chinese zodiacs are based on animals. In China and Japan, the butterfly has been seen as the personification of a person's soul, and in classical representation the butterfly is also the symbol of the soul. Animals have been the subjects of art from the earliest times, both historical, as in ancient Egypt, and prehistoric, as in the cave paintings at Lascaux. Major animal paintings include Albrecht Dürer's 1515 The Rhinoceros, and George Stubbs's c. 1762 horse portrait Whistlejacket. Insects, birds and mammals play roles in literature and film, such as in giant bug movies. Animals including insects and mammals feature in mythology and religion. The scarab beetle was sacred in ancient Egypt, and the cow is sacred in Hinduism. Among other mammals, deer, horses, lions, bats, bears, and wolves are the subjects of myths and worship. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke#cite_note-50] | [TOKENS: 8460] |
Contents Joke A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, and ends in a punch line, whereby the humorous element of the story is revealed; this can be done using a pun or other type of word play, irony or sarcasm, logical incompatibility, hyperbole, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition: A joke is a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the funniness culminates in the final sentence, called the punchline… In fact, the main condition is that the tension should reach its highest level at the very end. No continuation relieving the tension should be added. As for its being "oral," it is true that jokes may appear printed, but when further transferred, there is no obligation to reproduce the text verbatim, as in the case of poetry. It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners, the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humour—the shaggy dog story is an example of an anti-joke; although presented as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place and character, rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to deliver a punchline. Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is in the form of a joke. Some humorous forms which are not verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational humour, practical jokes, slapstick and anecdotes. Identified as one of the simple forms of oral literature by the Dutch linguist André Jolles, jokes are passed along anonymously. They are told in both private and public settings; a single person tells a joke to his friend in the natural flow of conversation, or a set of jokes is told to a group as part of scripted entertainment. Jokes are also passed along in written form or, more recently, through the internet. Stand-up comics, comedians and slapstick work with comic timing and rhythm in their performance, and may rely on actions as well as on the verbal punchline to evoke laughter. This distinction has been formulated in the popular saying "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny".[note 1] History in print Jokes do not belong to refined culture, but rather to the entertainment and leisure of all classes. As such, any printed versions were considered ephemera, i.e., temporary documents created for a specific purpose and intended to be thrown away. Many of these early jokes deal with scatological and sexual topics, entertaining to all social classes but not to be valued and saved.[citation needed] Various kinds of jokes have been identified in ancient pre-classical texts.[note 2] The oldest identified joke is an ancient Sumerian proverb from 1900 BC containing toilet humour: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." Its records were dated to the Old Babylonian period and the joke may go as far back as 2300 BC. The second oldest joke found, discovered on the Westcar Papyrus and believed to be about Sneferu, was from Ancient Egypt c. 1600 BC: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish." The tale of the three ox drivers from Adab completes the three known oldest jokes in the world. This is a comic triple dating back to 1200 BC Adab. It concerns three men seeking justice from a king on the matter of ownership over a newborn calf, for whose birth they all consider themselves to be partially responsible. The king seeks advice from a priestess on how to rule the case, and she suggests a series of events involving the men's households and wives. The final portion of the story (which included the punch line), has not survived intact, though legible fragments suggest it was bawdy in nature. Jokes can be notoriously difficult to translate from language to language; particularly puns, which depend on specific words and not just on their meanings. For instance, Julius Caesar once sold land at a surprisingly cheap price to his lover Servilia, who was rumoured to be prostituting her daughter Tertia to Caesar in order to keep his favour. Cicero remarked that "conparavit Servilia hunc fundum tertia deducta." The punny phrase, "tertia deducta", can be translated as "with one-third off (in price)", or "with Tertia putting out." The earliest extant joke book is the Philogelos (Greek for The Laughter-Lover), a collection of 265 jokes written in crude ancient Greek dating to the fourth or fifth century AD. The author of the collection is obscure and a number of different authors are attributed to it, including "Hierokles and Philagros the grammatikos", just "Hierokles", or, in the Suda, "Philistion". British classicist Mary Beard states that the Philogelos may have been intended as a jokester's handbook of quips to say on the fly, rather than a book meant to be read straight through. Many of the jokes in this collection are surprisingly familiar, even though the typical protagonists are less recognisable to contemporary readers: the absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath. The Philogelos even contains a joke similar to Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch". During the 15th century, the printing revolution spread across Europe following the development of the movable type printing press. This was coupled with the growth of literacy in all social classes. Printers turned out Jestbooks along with Bibles to meet both lowbrow and highbrow interests of the populace. One early anthology of jokes was the Facetiae by the Italian Poggio Bracciolini, first published in 1470. The popularity of this jest book can be measured on the twenty editions of the book documented alone for the 15th century. Another popular form was a collection of jests, jokes and funny situations attributed to a single character in a more connected, narrative form of the picaresque novel. Examples of this are the characters of Rabelais in France, Till Eulenspiegel in Germany, Lazarillo de Tormes in Spain and Master Skelton in England. There is also a jest book ascribed to William Shakespeare, the contents of which appear to both inform and borrow from his plays. All of these early jestbooks corroborate both the rise in the literacy of the European populations and the general quest for leisure activities during the Renaissance in Europe. The practice of printers using jokes and cartoons as page fillers was also widely used in the broadsides and chapbooks of the 19th century and earlier. With the increase in literacy in the general population and the growth of the printing industry, these publications were the most common forms of printed material between the 16th and 19th centuries throughout Europe and North America. Along with reports of events, executions, ballads and verse, they also contained jokes. Only one of many broadsides archived in the Harvard library is described as "1706. Grinning made easy; or, Funny Dick's unrivalled collection of curious, comical, odd, droll, humorous, witty, whimsical, laughable, and eccentric jests, jokes, bulls, epigrams, &c. With many other descriptions of wit and humour." These cheap publications, ephemera intended for mass distribution, were read alone, read aloud, posted and discarded. There are many types of joke books in print today; a search on the internet provides a plethora of titles available for purchase. They can be read alone for solitary entertainment, or used to stock up on new jokes to entertain friends. Some people try to find a deeper meaning in jokes, as in "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes".[note 3] However a deeper meaning is not necessary to appreciate their inherent entertainment value. Magazines frequently use jokes and cartoons as filler for the printed page. Reader's Digest closes out many articles with an (unrelated) joke at the bottom of the article. The New Yorker was first published in 1925 with the stated goal of being a "sophisticated humour magazine" and is still known for its cartoons. Telling jokes Telling a joke is a cooperative effort; it requires that the teller and the audience mutually agree in one form or another to understand the narrative which follows as a joke. In a study of conversation analysis, the sociologist Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in the telling of a single joke. "This telling is composed, as for stories, of three serially ordered and adjacently placed types of sequences … the preface [framing], the telling, and the response sequences." Folklorists expand this to include the context of the joking. Who is telling what jokes to whom? And why is he telling them when? The context of the joke-telling in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who engage in institutionalised banter and joking. Framing is done with a (frequently formulaic) expression which keys the audience in to expect a joke. "Have you heard the one…", "Reminds me of a joke I heard…", "So, a lawyer and a doctor…"; these conversational markers are just a few examples of linguistic frames used to start a joke. Regardless of the frame used, it creates a social space and clear boundaries around the narrative which follows. Audience response to this initial frame can be acknowledgement and anticipation of the joke to follow. It can also be a dismissal, as in "this is no joking matter" or "this is no time for jokes". The performance frame serves to label joke-telling as a culturally marked form of communication. Both the performer and audience understand it to be set apart from the "real" world. "An elephant walks into a bar…"; a person sufficiently familiar with both the English language and the way jokes are told automatically understands that such a compressed and formulaic story, being told with no substantiating details, and placing an unlikely combination of characters into an unlikely setting and involving them in an unrealistic plot, is the start of a joke, and the story that follows is not meant to be taken at face value (i.e. it is non-bona-fide communication). The framing itself invokes a play mode; if the audience is unable or unwilling to move into play, then nothing will seem funny. Following its linguistic framing the joke, in the form of a story, can be told. It is not required to be verbatim text like other forms of oral literature such as riddles and proverbs. The teller can and does modify the text of the joke, depending both on memory and the present audience. The important characteristic is that the narrative is succinct, containing only those details which lead directly to an understanding and decoding of the punchline. This requires that it support the same (or similar) divergent scripts which are to be embodied in the punchline. The punchline is intended to make the audience laugh. A linguistic interpretation of this punchline/response is elucidated by Victor Raskin in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour. Humour is evoked when a trigger contained in the punchline causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding of the story from the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing interpretation. "The punchline is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary to interpret [re-interpret] the joke text." To produce the humour in the verbal joke, the two interpretations (i.e. scripts) need to both be compatible with the joke text and opposite or incompatible with each other. Thomas R. Shultz, a psychologist, independently expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution." He explains that "… incongruity alone is insufficient to account for the structure of humour. […] Within this framework, humour appreciation is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity." In the case of a joke, that resolution generates laughter. This is the point at which the field of neurolinguistics offers some insight into the cognitive processing involved in this abrupt laughter at the punchline. Studies by the cognitive science researchers Coulson and Kutas directly address the theory of script switching articulated by Raskin in their work. The article "Getting it: Human event-related brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders" measures brain activity in response to reading jokes. Additional studies by others in the field support more generally the theory of two-stage processing of humour, as evidenced in the longer processing time they require. In the related field of neuroscience, it has been shown that the expression of laughter is caused by two partially independent neuronal pathways: an "involuntary" or "emotionally driven" system and a "voluntary" system. This study adds credence to the common experience when exposed to an off-colour joke; a laugh is followed in the next breath by a disclaimer: "Oh, that's bad…" Here the multiple steps in cognition are clearly evident in the stepped response, the perception being processed just a breath faster than the resolution of the moral/ethical content in the joke. Expected response to a joke is laughter. The joke teller hopes the audience "gets it" and is entertained. This leads to the premise that a joke is actually an "understanding test" between individuals and groups. If the listeners do not get the joke, they are not understanding the two scripts which are contained in the narrative as they were intended. Or they do "get it" and do not laugh; it might be too obscene, too gross or too dumb for the current audience. A woman might respond differently to a joke told by a male colleague around the water cooler than she would to the same joke overheard in a women's lavatory. A joke involving toilet humour may be funnier told on the playground at elementary school than on a college campus. The same joke will elicit different responses in different settings. The punchline in the joke remains the same, however, it is more or less appropriate depending on the current context. The context explores the specific social situation in which joking occurs. The narrator automatically modifies the text of the joke to be acceptable to different audiences, while at the same time supporting the same divergent scripts in the punchline. The vocabulary used in telling the same joke at a university fraternity party and to one's grandmother might well vary. In each situation, it is important to identify both the narrator and the audience as well as their relationship with each other. This varies to reflect the complexities of a matrix of different social factors: age, sex, race, ethnicity, kinship, political views, religion, power relationships, etc. When all the potential combinations of such factors between the narrator and the audience are considered, then a single joke can take on infinite shades of meaning for each unique social setting. The context, however, should not be confused with the function of the joking. "Function is essentially an abstraction made on the basis of a number of contexts". In one long-term observation of men coming off the late shift at a local café, joking with the waitresses was used to ascertain sexual availability for the evening. Different types of jokes, going from general to topical into explicitly sexual humour signalled openness on the part of the waitress for a connection. This study describes how jokes and joking are used to communicate much more than just good humour. That is a single example of the function of joking in a social setting, but there are others. Sometimes jokes are used simply to get to know someone better. What makes them laugh, what do they find funny? Jokes concerning politics, religion or sexual topics can be used effectively to gauge the attitude of the audience to any one of these topics. They can also be used as a marker of group identity, signalling either inclusion or exclusion for the group. Among pre-adolescents, "dirty" jokes allow them to share information about their changing bodies. And sometimes joking is just simple entertainment for a group of friends. Relationships The context of joking in turn leads to a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who take part in institutionalised banter and joking. These relationships can be either one-way or a mutual back and forth between partners. The joking relationship is defined as a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism. The behaviour is such that in any other social context it would express and arouse hostility; but it is not meant seriously and must not be taken seriously. There is a pretence of hostility along with a real friendliness. To put it in another way, the relationship is one of permitted disrespect. Joking relationships were first described by anthropologists within kinship groups in Africa. But they have since been identified in cultures around the world, where jokes and joking are used to mark and reinforce appropriate boundaries of a relationship. Electronic The advent of electronic communications at the end of the 20th century introduced new traditions into jokes. A verbal joke or cartoon is emailed to a friend or posted on a bulletin board; reactions include a replied email with a :-) or LOL, or a forward on to further recipients. Interaction is limited to the computer screen and for the most part solitary. While preserving the text of a joke, both context and variants are lost in internet joking; for the most part, emailed jokes are passed along verbatim. The framing of the joke frequently occurs in the subject line: "RE: laugh for the day" or something similar. The forward of an email joke can increase the number of recipients exponentially. Internet joking forces a re-evaluation of social spaces and social groups. They are no longer only defined by physical presence and locality, they also exist in the connectivity in cyberspace. "The computer networks appear to make possible communities that, although physically dispersed, display attributes of the direct, unconstrained, unofficial exchanges folklorists typically concern themselves with". This is particularly evident in the spread of topical jokes, "that genre of lore in which whole crops of jokes spring up seemingly overnight around some sensational event … flourish briefly and then disappear, as the mass media move on to fresh maimings and new collective tragedies". This correlates with the new understanding of the internet as an "active folkloric space" with evolving social and cultural forces and clearly identifiable performers and audiences. A study by the folklorist Bill Ellis documented how an evolving cycle was circulated over the internet. By accessing message boards that specialised in humour immediately following the 9/11 disaster, Ellis was able to observe in real-time both the topical jokes being posted electronically and responses to the jokes. Previous folklore research has been limited to collecting and documenting successful jokes, and only after they had emerged and come to folklorists' attention. Now, an Internet-enhanced collection creates a time machine, as it were, where we can observe what happens in the period before the risible moment, when attempts at humour are unsuccessful Access to archived message boards also enables us to track the development of a single joke thread in the context of a more complicated virtual conversation. Joke cycles A joke cycle is a collection of jokes about a single target or situation which displays consistent narrative structure and type of humour. Some well-known cycles are elephant jokes using nonsense humour, dead baby jokes incorporating black humour, and light bulb jokes, which describe all kinds of operational stupidity. Joke cycles can centre on ethnic groups, professions (viola jokes), catastrophes, settings (…walks into a bar), absurd characters (wind-up dolls), or logical mechanisms which generate the humour (knock-knock jokes). A joke can be reused in different joke cycles; an example of this is the same Head & Shoulders joke refitted to the tragedies of Vic Morrow, Admiral Mountbatten and the crew of the Challenger space shuttle.[note 4] These cycles seem to appear spontaneously, spread rapidly across countries and borders only to dissipate after some time. Folklorists and others have studied individual joke cycles in an attempt to understand their function and significance within the culture. Joke cycles circulated in the recent past include: As with the 9/11 disaster discussed above, cycles attach themselves to celebrities or national catastrophes such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the death of Michael Jackson, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These cycles arise regularly as a response to terrible unexpected events which command the national news. An in-depth analysis of the Challenger joke cycle documents a change in the type of humour circulated following the disaster, from February to March 1986. "It shows that the jokes appeared in distinct 'waves', the first responding to the disaster with clever wordplay and the second playing with grim and troubling images associated with the event…The primary social function of disaster jokes appears to be to provide closure to an event that provoked communal grieving, by signalling that it was time to move on and pay attention to more immediate concerns". The sociologist Christie Davies has written extensively on ethnic jokes told in countries around the world. In ethnic jokes he finds that the "stupid" ethnic target in the joke is no stranger to the culture, but rather a peripheral social group (geographic, economic, cultural, linguistic) well known to the joke tellers. So Americans tell jokes about Polacks and Italians, Germans tell jokes about Ostfriesens, and the English tell jokes about the Irish. In a review of Davies' theories it is said that "For Davies, [ethnic] jokes are more about how joke tellers imagine themselves than about how they imagine those others who serve as their putative targets…The jokes thus serve to center one in the world – to remind people of their place and to reassure them that they are in it." A third category of joke cycles identifies absurd characters as the butt: for example the grape, the dead baby or the elephant. Beginning in the 1960s, social and cultural interpretations of these joke cycles, spearheaded by the folklorist Alan Dundes, began to appear in academic journals. Dead baby jokes are posited to reflect societal changes and guilt caused by widespread use of contraception and abortion beginning in the 1960s.[note 5] Elephant jokes have been interpreted variously as stand-ins for American blacks during the Civil Rights Era or as an "image of something large and wild abroad in the land captur[ing] the sense of counterculture" of the sixties. These interpretations strive for a cultural understanding of the themes of these jokes which go beyond the simple collection and documentation undertaken previously by folklorists and ethnologists. Classification systems As folktales and other types of oral literature became collectables throughout Europe in the 19th century (Brothers Grimm et al.), folklorists and anthropologists of the time needed a system to organise these items. The Aarne–Thompson classification system was first published in 1910 by Antti Aarne, and later expanded by Stith Thompson to become the most renowned classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. Its final section addresses anecdotes and jokes, listing traditional humorous tales ordered by their protagonist; "This section of the Index is essentially a classification of the older European jests, or merry tales – humorous stories characterized by short, fairly simple plots. …" Due to its focus on older tale types and obsolete actors (e.g., numbskull), the Aarne–Thompson Index does not provide much help in identifying and classifying the modern joke. A more granular classification system used widely by folklorists and cultural anthropologists is the Thompson Motif Index, which separates tales into their individual story elements. This system enables jokes to be classified according to individual motifs included in the narrative: actors, items and incidents. It does not provide a system to classify the text by more than one element at a time while at the same time making it theoretically possible to classify the same text under multiple motifs. The Thompson Motif Index has spawned further specialised motif indices, each of which focuses on a single aspect of one subset of jokes. A sampling of just a few of these specialised indices have been listed under other motif indices. Here one can select an index for medieval Spanish folk narratives, another index for linguistic verbal jokes, and a third one for sexual humour. To assist the researcher with this increasingly confusing situation, there are also multiple bibliographies of indices as well as a how-to guide on creating your own index. Several difficulties have been identified with these systems of identifying oral narratives according to either tale types or story elements. A first major problem is their hierarchical organisation; one element of the narrative is selected as the major element, while all other parts are arrayed subordinate to this. A second problem with these systems is that the listed motifs are not qualitatively equal; actors, items and incidents are all considered side-by-side. And because incidents will always have at least one actor and usually have an item, most narratives can be ordered under multiple headings. This leads to confusion about both where to order an item and where to find it. A third significant problem is that the "excessive prudery" common in the middle of the 20th century means that obscene, sexual and scatological elements were regularly ignored in many of the indices. The folklorist Robert Georges has summed up the concerns with these existing classification systems: …Yet what the multiplicity and variety of sets and subsets reveal is that folklore [jokes] not only takes many forms, but that it is also multifaceted, with purpose, use, structure, content, style, and function all being relevant and important. Any one or combination of these multiple and varied aspects of a folklore example [such as jokes] might emerge as dominant in a specific situation or for a particular inquiry. It has proven difficult to organise all different elements of a joke into a multi-dimensional classification system which could be of real value in the study and evaluation of this (primarily oral) complex narrative form. The General Theory of Verbal Humour or GTVH, developed by the linguists Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo, attempts to do exactly this. This classification system was developed specifically for jokes and later expanded to include longer types of humorous narratives. Six different aspects of the narrative, labelled Knowledge Resources or KRs, can be evaluated largely independently of each other, and then combined into a concatenated classification label. These six KRs of the joke structure include: As development of the GTVH progressed, a hierarchy of the KRs was established to partially restrict the options for lower-level KRs depending on the KRs defined above them. For example, a lightbulb joke (SI) will always be in the form of a riddle (NS). Outside of these restrictions, the KRs can create a multitude of combinations, enabling a researcher to select jokes for analysis which contain only one or two defined KRs. It also allows for an evaluation of the similarity or dissimilarity of jokes depending on the similarity of their labels. "The GTVH presents itself as a mechanism … of generating [or describing] an infinite number of jokes by combining the various values that each parameter can take. … Descriptively, to analyze a joke in the GTVH consists of listing the values of the 6 KRs (with the caveat that TA and LM may be empty)." This classification system provides a functional multi-dimensional label for any joke, and indeed any verbal humour. Joke and humour research Many academic disciplines lay claim to the study of jokes (and other forms of humour) as within their purview. Fortunately, there are enough jokes, good, bad and worse, to go around. The studies of jokes from each of the interested disciplines bring to mind the tale of the blind men and an elephant where the observations, although accurate reflections of their own competent methodological inquiry, frequently fail to grasp the beast in its entirety. This attests to the joke as a traditional narrative form which is indeed complex, concise and complete in and of itself. It requires a "multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary field of inquiry" to truly appreciate these nuggets of cultural insight.[note 6] Sigmund Freud was one of the first modern scholars to recognise jokes as an important object of investigation. In his 1905 study Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious Freud describes the social nature of humour and illustrates his text with many examples of contemporary Viennese jokes. His work is particularly noteworthy in this context because Freud distinguishes in his writings between jokes, humour and the comic. These are distinctions which become easily blurred in many subsequent studies where everything funny tends to be gathered under the umbrella term of "humour", making for a much more diffuse discussion. Since the publication of Freud's study, psychologists have continued to explore humour and jokes in their quest to explain, predict and control an individual's "sense of humour". Why do people laugh? Why do people find something funny? Can jokes predict character, or vice versa, can character predict the jokes an individual laughs at? What is a "sense of humour"? A current review of the popular magazine Psychology Today lists over 200 articles discussing various aspects of humour; in psychological jargon, the subject area has become both an emotion to measure and a tool to use in diagnostics and treatment. A new psychological assessment tool, the Values in Action Inventory developed by the American psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman includes humour (and playfulness) as one of the core character strengths of an individual. As such, it could be a good predictor of life satisfaction. For psychologists, it would be useful to measure both how much of this strength an individual has and how it can be measurably increased. A 2007 survey of existing tools to measure humour identified more than 60 psychological measurement instruments. These measurement tools use many different approaches to quantify humour along with its related states and traits. There are tools to measure an individual's physical response by their smile; the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is one of several tools used to identify any one of multiple types of smiles. Or the laugh can be measured to calculate the funniness response of an individual; multiple types of laughter have been identified. It must be stressed here that both smiles and laughter are not always a response to something funny. In trying to develop a measurement tool, most systems use "jokes and cartoons" as their test materials. However, because no two tools use the same jokes, and across languages this would not be feasible, how does one determine that the assessment objects are comparable? Moving on, whom does one ask to rate the sense of humour of an individual? Does one ask the person themselves, an impartial observer, or their family, friends and colleagues? Furthermore, has the current mood of the test subjects been considered; someone with a recent death in the family might not be much prone to laughter. Given the plethora of variants revealed by even a superficial glance at the problem, it becomes evident that these paths of scientific inquiry are mined with problematic pitfalls and questionable solutions. The psychologist Willibald Ruch [de] has been very active in the research of humour. He has collaborated with the linguists Raskin and Attardo on their General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) classification system. Their goal is to empirically test both the six autonomous classification types (KRs) and the hierarchical ordering of these KRs. Advancement in this direction would be a win-win for both fields of study; linguistics would have empirical verification of this multi-dimensional classification system for jokes, and psychology would have a standardised joke classification with which they could develop verifiably comparable measurement tools. "The linguistics of humor has made gigantic strides forward in the last decade and a half and replaced the psychology of humor as the most advanced theoretical approach to the study of this important and universal human faculty." This recent statement by one noted linguist and humour researcher describes, from his perspective, contemporary linguistic humour research. Linguists study words, how words are strung together to build sentences, how sentences create meaning which can be communicated from one individual to another, and how our interaction with each other using words creates discourse. Jokes have been defined above as oral narratives in which words and sentences are engineered to build toward a punchline. The linguist's question is: what exactly makes the punchline funny? This question focuses on how the words used in the punchline create humour, in contrast to the psychologist's concern (see above) with the audience's response to the punchline. The assessment of humour by psychologists "is made from the individual's perspective; e.g. the phenomenon associated with responding to or creating humor and not a description of humor itself." Linguistics, on the other hand, endeavours to provide a precise description of what makes a text funny. Two major new linguistic theories have been developed and tested within the last decades. The first was advanced by Victor Raskin in "Semantic Mechanisms of Humor", published 1985. While being a variant on the more general concepts of the incongruity theory of humour, it is the first theory to identify its approach as exclusively linguistic. The Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH) begins by identifying two linguistic conditions which make a text funny. It then goes on to identify the mechanisms involved in creating the punchline. This theory established the semantic/pragmatic foundation of humour as well as the humour competence of speakers.[note 7] Several years later the SSTH was incorporated into a more expansive theory of jokes put forth by Raskin and his colleague Salvatore Attardo. In the General Theory of Verbal Humour, the SSTH was relabelled as a Logical Mechanism (LM) (referring to the mechanism which connects the different linguistic scripts in the joke) and added to five other independent Knowledge Resources (KR). Together these six KRs could now function as a multi-dimensional descriptive label for any piece of humorous text. Linguistics has developed further methodological tools which can be applied to jokes: discourse analysis and conversation analysis of joking. Both of these subspecialties within the field focus on "naturally occurring" language use, i.e. the analysis of real (usually recorded) conversations. One of these studies has already been discussed above, where Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in telling a single joke. Discourse analysis emphasises the entire context of social joking, the social interaction which cradles the words. Folklore and cultural anthropology have perhaps the strongest claims on jokes as belonging to their bailiwick. Jokes remain one of the few remaining forms of traditional folk literature transmitted orally in western cultures. Identified as one of the "simple forms" of oral literature by André Jolles in 1930, they have been collected and studied since there were folklorists and anthropologists abroad in the lands. As a genre they were important enough at the beginning of the 20th century to be included under their own heading in the Aarne–Thompson index first published in 1910: Anecdotes and jokes. Beginning in the 1960s, cultural researchers began to expand their role from collectors and archivists of "folk ideas" to a more active role of interpreters of cultural artefacts. One of the foremost scholars active during this transitional time was the folklorist Alan Dundes. He started asking questions of tradition and transmission with the key observation that "No piece of folklore continues to be transmitted unless it means something, even if neither the speaker nor the audience can articulate what that meaning might be." In the context of jokes, this then becomes the basis for further research. Why is the joke told right now? Only in this expanded perspective is an understanding of its meaning to the participants possible. This questioning resulted in a blossoming of monographs to explore the significance of many joke cycles. What is so funny about absurd nonsense elephant jokes? Why make light of dead babies? In an article on contemporary German jokes about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Dundes justifies this research: Whether one finds Auschwitz jokes funny or not is not an issue. This material exists and should be recorded. Jokes are always an important barometer of the attitudes of a group. The jokes exist and they obviously must fill some psychic need for those individuals who tell them and those who listen to them. A stimulating generation of new humour theories flourishes like mushrooms in the undergrowth: Elliott Oring's theoretical discussions on "appropriate ambiguity" and Amy Carrell's hypothesis of an "audience-based theory of verbal humor (1993)" to name just a few. In his book Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach, the anthropologist Mahadev Apte presents a solid case for his own academic perspective. "Two axioms underlie my discussion, namely, that humor is by and large culture based and that humor can be a major conceptual and methodological tool for gaining insights into cultural systems." Apte goes on to call for legitimising the field of humour research as "humorology"; this would be a field of study incorporating an interdisciplinary character of humour studies. While the label "humorology" has yet to become a household word, great strides are being made in the international recognition of this interdisciplinary field of research. The International Society for Humor Studies was founded in 1989 with the stated purpose to "promote, stimulate and encourage the interdisciplinary study of humour; to support and cooperate with local, national, and international organizations having similar purposes; to organize and arrange meetings; and to issue and encourage publications concerning the purpose of the society". It also publishes Humor: International Journal of Humor Research and holds yearly conferences to promote and inform its speciality. In 1872, Charles Darwin published one of the first "comprehensive and in many ways remarkably accurate description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial action and gesture and posture" (Laughter) in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In this early study Darwin raises further questions about who laughs and why they laugh; the myriad responses since then illustrate the complexities of this behaviour. To understand laughter in humans and other primates, the science of gelotology (from the Greek gelos, meaning laughter) has been established; it is the study of laughter and its effects on the body from both a psychological and physiological perspective. While jokes can provoke laughter, laughter cannot be used as a one-to-one marker of jokes because there are multiple stimuli to laughter, humour being just one of them. The other six causes of laughter listed are social context, ignorance, anxiety, derision, acting apology, and tickling. As such, the study of laughter is a secondary albeit entertaining perspective in an understanding of jokes. Computational humour is a new field of study which uses computers to model humour; it bridges the disciplines of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. A primary ambition of this field is to develop computer programs which can both generate a joke and recognise a text snippet as a joke. Early programming attempts have dealt almost exclusively with punning because this lends itself to simple straightforward rules. These primitive programs display no intelligence; instead, they work off a template with a finite set of pre-defined punning options upon which to build. More sophisticated computer joke programs have yet to be developed. Based on our understanding of the SSTH / GTVH humour theories, it is easy to see why. The linguistic scripts (a.k.a. frames) referenced in these theories include, for any given word, a "large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it [...] a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker". These scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word; they contain the speaker's complete knowledge of the concept as it exists in his world. As insentient machines, computers lack the encyclopaedic scripts which humans gain through life experience. They also lack the ability to gather the experiences needed to build wide-ranging semantic scripts and understand language in a broader context, a context that any child picks up in daily interaction with his environment. Further development in this field must wait until computational linguists have succeeded in programming a computer with an ontological semantic natural language processing system. It is only "the most complex linguistic structures [which] can serve any formal and/or computational treatment of humor well". Toy systems (i.e. dummy punning programs) are completely inadequate to the task. Despite the fact that the field of computational humour is small and underdeveloped, it is encouraging to note the many interdisciplinary efforts which are currently underway. See also Notes References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/peak-xv-raises-1-3b-doubles-down-on-ai-as-global-vc-rivalry-in-india-heats-up/] | [TOKENS: 1063] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Peak XV raises $1.3B, doubles down on AI as global VC rivalry in India heats up Peak XV announced on Friday that it has raised $1.3 billion across new India and Asia-focused funds. The firm, which now manages more than $10 billion in assets, is sharpening its focus on artificial intelligence and cross-border bets amid intensifying competition for deals in the region. The capital will be deployed across its India seed and venture funds as well as its APAC vehicle. A majority is earmarked for India, with the firm expecting to invest the pool over the next two to three years, managing director Shailendra Singh said in an interview on Friday. Peak XV split from Sequoia Capital in 2023, in an effort to separate the India-focused portions of Sequoia’s portfolio. The firm now counts more than 450 portfolio companies across fintech, software, and consumer internet, spanning seed to growth stages. The firm’s new fundraise comes as New Delhi hosts the AI Impact Summit, drawing major technology players including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. At the event, General Catalyst outlined plans to invest $5 billion in the country over the next five years, sharply increasing its earlier commitment to the market. Singh said Peak XV is not trying to match rivals dollar-for-dollar, emphasizing that the firm’s priority is generating strong returns rather than maximizing assets under management. The firm will continue to size its funds based on where it sees the best opportunity to deliver “high-performing funds,” he said. He added that Peak XV is still building its presence in the U.S. and is selective about where it competes. “In the U.S. market, we are an underdog — and that’s great,” Singh said, adding that the firm is focusing on areas where its experience in software, developer tools, and fintech gives it an edge. The latest fundraise follows a period of leadership changes at Peak XV, including the recent departures of senior partner Ashish Agrawal and investors Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma. Singh told TechCrunch the firm retains significant experience on its leadership team, noting that five of its seven managing partners have been with Peak XV for more than a decade. The broader Peak XV team includes more than 30 full-time investors, with about a dozen leading investments across its markets. Peak XV has returned more than $7 billion in cash to investors since inception, Singh said, adding that 35 of its portfolio companies have gone public. He declined to specify distributions since the firm’s split from Sequoia Capital. In September 2024, TechCrunch reported that the firm had returned about $1.2 billion in the year. Ahead of the current raise, Peak XV’s prior fund was sized at $2.85 billion in late 2021, before the firm split from Sequoia Capital. That figure was later reduced to about $2.4 billion as part of what Singh described as a disciplined approach to capital. The earlier pool included Peak XV’s India growth strategy, and Singh said the firm does not plan to raise a new growth fund until more of that dry powder is deployed. Singh expects to deploy the new capital primarily into AI, fintech, and consumer startups, while also seeing emerging opportunities in deep tech. The firm has made more than 80 investments in AI startups to date. He added that the U.S.-India ties are becoming increasingly important as more founders in the region build for global markets. Topics Reporter Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy-related updates, and all other major tech-centric developments from India for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a principal correspondent at NDTV. You can contact or verify outreach from Jagmeet by emailing mail@journalistjagmeet.com. Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Mars] | [TOKENS: 5053] |
Contents Geology of Mars The geology of Mars is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the planet Mars. It emphasizes the composition, structure, history, and physical processes that shape the planet. It is analogous to the field of terrestrial geology. In planetary science, the term geology is used in its broadest sense to mean the study of the solid parts of planets and moons. The term incorporates aspects of geophysics, geochemistry, mineralogy, geodesy, and cartography. A neologism, areology, from the Greek word Arēs (Mars), sometimes appears as a synonym for Mars's geology in the popular media and works of science fiction (e.g. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy). The term areology is also used by the Areological Society. Geological map of Mars (2014) Composition of Mars Mars is a terrestrial planet, which has undergone the process of planetary differentiation. The InSight lander mission is designed to study the deep interior of Mars. The mission landed on 26 November 2018. and deployed a sensitive seismometer to enable 3D structure mapping of the deep interior. On 25 October 2023, scientists, helped by information from InSight, reported that the planet Mars has a radioactive magma ocean under its crust. Global physiography Mars has a number of distinct, large-scale surface features that indicate the types of geological processes that have operated on the planet over time. This section introduces several of the larger physiographic regions of Mars. Together, these regions illustrate how geologic processes involving volcanism, tectonism, water, ice, and impacts have shaped the planet on a global scale. The northern and southern hemispheres of Mars are strikingly different from each other in topography and physiography. This dichotomy is a fundamental global geologic feature of the planet. The northern part is an enormous topographic depression. About one-third of the surface (mostly in the northern hemisphere) lies 3–6 km lower in elevation than the southern two-thirds. This is a first-order relief feature on par with the elevation difference between Earth's continents and ocean basins. The dichotomy is also expressed in two other ways: as a difference in impact crater density and crustal thickness between the two hemispheres. The hemisphere south of the dichotomy boundary (often called the southern highlands or uplands) is very heavily cratered and ancient, characterized by rugged surfaces that date back to the period of heavy bombardment. In contrast, the lowlands north of the dichotomy boundary have few large craters, are very smooth and flat, and have other features indicating that extensive resurfacing has occurred since the southern highlands formed. The third distinction between the two hemispheres is in crustal thickness. Topographic and geophysical gravity data indicate that the crust in the southern highlands has a maximum thickness of about 58 km (36 mi), whereas the crust in the northern lowlands "peaks" at around 32 km (20 mi) in thickness. The location of the dichotomy boundary varies in latitude across Mars and depends on which of the three physical expressions of the dichotomy is being considered. The origin and age of the hemispheric dichotomy are still debated. Hypotheses of origin generally fall into two categories: one, the dichotomy was produced by a mega-impact event or several large impacts early in the planet's history (exogenic theories) or two, the dichotomy was produced by crustal thinning in the northern hemisphere by mantle convection, overturning, or other chemical and thermal processes in the planet's interior (endogenic theories). One endogenic model proposes an early episode of plate tectonics producing a thinner crust in the north, similar to what is occurring at spreading plate boundaries on Earth. Whatever its origin, the Martian dichotomy appears to be extremely old. A new theory based on the Southern Polar Giant Impact and validated by the discovery of twelve hemispherical alignments shows that exogenic theories appear to be stronger than endogenic theories and that Mars never had plate tectonics that could modify the dichotomy. Laser altimeters and radar-sounding data from orbiting spacecraft have identified a large number of basin-sized structures previously hidden in visual images. Called quasi-circular depressions (QCDs), these features likely represent derelict impact craters from the period of heavy bombardment that are now covered by a veneer of younger deposits. Crater counting studies of QCDs suggest that the underlying surface in the northern hemisphere is at least as old as the oldest exposed crust in the southern highlands. The ancient age of the dichotomy places a significant constraint on theories of its origin. Straddling the dichotomy boundary in Mars's western hemisphere is a massive volcano-tectonic province known as the Tharsis region or the Tharsis bulge. This immense, elevated structure is thousands of kilometers in diameter and covers up to 25% of the planet's surface. Averaging 7–10 km above datum (Martian "sea" level), Tharsis contains the highest elevations on the planet and the largest known volcanoes in the Solar System. Three enormous volcanoes, Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons (collectively known as the Tharsis Montes), sit aligned NE-SW along the crest of the bulge. The vast Alba Mons (formerly Alba Patera) occupies the northern part of the region. The huge shield volcano Olympus Mons lies off the main bulge, at the western edge of the province. The extreme massiveness of Tharsis has placed tremendous stress on the planet's lithosphere. As a result, immense extensional fractures (grabens and rift valleys) radiate outward from Tharsis, extending halfway around the planet. A smaller volcanic center lies several thousand kilometers west of Tharsis in Elysium. The Elysium volcanic complex is about 2,000 kilometers in diameter and consists of three main volcanoes, Elysium Mons, Hecates Tholus, and Albor Tholus. The Elysium group of volcanoes is thought to be somewhat different from the Tharsis Montes, in that development of the former involved both lavas and pyroclastics. Several enormous, circular impact basins are present on Mars. The largest one that is readily visible is the Hellas basin located in the southern hemisphere. It is the second largest confirmed impact structure on the planet, centered at about 64°E longitude and 40°S latitude. The central part of the basin (Hellas Planitia) is 1,800 km in diameter and surrounded by a broad, heavily eroded annular rim structure characterized by closely spaced rugged irregular mountains (massifs), which probably represent uplifted, jostled blocks of old pre-basin crust. (See Anseris Mons, for example.) Ancient, low-relief volcanic constructs (highland paterae) are located on the northeastern and southwestern parts of the rim. The basin floor contains thick, structurally complex sedimentary deposits that have a long geologic history of deposition, erosion, and internal deformation. The lowest elevations on the planet are located within the Hellas basin, with some areas of the basin floor lying over 8 km below datum. The two other large impact structures on the planet are the Argyre and Isidis basins. Like Hellas, Argyre (800 km in diameter) is located in the southern highlands and is surrounded by a broad ring of mountains. The mountains in the southern portion of the rim, Charitum Montes, may have been eroded by valley glaciers and ice sheets at some point in Mars's history. The Isidis basin (roughly 1,000 km in diameter) lies on the dichotomy boundary at about 87°E longitude. The northeastern part of the basin rim has been eroded and is now buried by northern plains deposits, giving the basin a semicircular outline. The northwestern rim of the basin is characterized by arcuate grabens (Nili Fossae) that are circumferential to the basin. One additional large basin, Utopia, is completely buried by northern plains deposits. Its outline is clearly discernable only from altimetry data. All of the large basins on Mars are extremely old, dating to the late heavy bombardment. They are thought to be comparable in age to the Imbrium and Orientale basins on the Moon. Near the equator in the western hemisphere lies an immense system of deep, interconnected canyons and troughs collectively known as the Valles Marineris. The canyon system extends eastward from Tharsis for a length of over 4,000 km, nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference. If placed on Earth, Valles Marineris would span the width of North America. In places, the canyons are up to 300 km wide and 10 km deep. Often compared to Earth's Grand Canyon, the Valles Marineris has a very different origin than its tinier, so-called counterpart on Earth. The Grand Canyon is largely a product of water erosion. The Martian equatorial canyons were of tectonic origin, i.e. they were formed mostly by faulting. They could be similar to the East African Rift valleys. The canyons represent the surface expression of a powerful extensional strain in the Martian crust, probably due to loading from the Tharsis bulge. The terrain at the eastern end of the Valles Marineris grades into dense jumbles of low rounded hills that seem to have formed by the collapse of upland surfaces to form broad, rubble-filled hollows. Called chaotic terrain, these areas mark the heads of huge outflow channels that emerge full size from the chaotic terrain and empty (debouch) northward into Chryse Planitia. The presence of streamlined islands and other geomorphic features indicate that the channels were most likely formed by catastrophic releases of water from aquifers or the melting of subsurface ice. However, these features could also be formed by abundant volcanic lava flows coming from Tharsis. The channels, which include Ares, Shalbatana, Simud, and Tiu Valles, are enormous by terrestrial standards, and the flows that formed them correspondingly immense. For example, the peak discharge required to carve the 28-km-wide Ares Vallis is estimated to have been 14 million cubic metres (500 million cu ft) per second, over ten thousand times the average discharge of the Mississippi River. The polar ice caps are well-known telescopic features of Mars, first identified by Christiaan Huygens in 1672. Since the 1960s, we have known that the seasonal caps (those seen in the telescope to grow and wane seasonally) are composed of carbon dioxide (CO2) ice that condenses out of the atmosphere as temperatures fall to 148 K, the frost point of CO2, during the polar wintertime. In the north, the CO2 ice completely dissipates (sublimes) in summer, leaving behind a residual cap of water (H2O) ice. At the south pole, a small residual cap of CO2 ice remains in summer. Both residual ice caps overlie thick layered deposits of interbedded ice and dust. In the north, the layered deposits form a 3 km-high, 1,000 km-diameter plateau called Planum Boreum. A similar kilometers-thick plateau, Planum Australe, lies in the south. Both plana (the Latin plural of planum) are sometimes treated as synonymous with the polar ice caps, but the permanent ice (seen as the high albedo, white surfaces in images) forms only a relatively thin mantle on top of the layered deposits. The layered deposits probably represent alternating cycles of dust and ice deposition caused by climate changes related to variations in the planet's orbital parameters over time (see also Milankovitch cycles). The polar layered deposits are some of the youngest geologic units on Mars. Geological history Albedo features No topography is visible on Mars from Earth. The bright areas and dark markings seen through a telescope are albedo features. The bright, red-ochre areas are locations where fine dust covers the surface. Bright areas (excluding the polar caps and clouds) include Hellas, Tharsis, and Arabia Terra. The dark gray markings represent areas that the wind has swept clean of dust, leaving behind the lower layer of dark, rocky material. Dark markings are most distinct in a broad belt from 0° to 40° S latitude. However, the most prominent dark marking, Syrtis Major Planum, is in the northern hemisphere. The classical albedo feature, Mare Acidalium (Acidalia Planitia), is another prominent dark area in the northern hemisphere. A third type of area, intermediate in color and albedo, is also present and thought to represent regions containing a mixture of the material from the bright and dark areas. Impact craters Impact craters were first identified on Mars by the Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965. Early observations showed that Martian craters were generally shallower and smoother than lunar craters, indicating that Mars has a more active history of erosion and deposition than the Moon. In other aspects, Martian craters resemble lunar craters. Both are products of hypervelocity impacts and show a progression of morphology types with increasing size. Martian craters below about 7 km in diameter are called simple craters; they are bowl-shaped with sharp raised rims and have depth/diameter ratios of about 1/5. Martian craters change from simple to more complex types at diameters of roughly 5 to 8 km. Complex craters have central peaks (or peak complexes), relatively flat floors, and terracing or slumping along the inner walls. Complex craters are shallower than simple craters in proportion to their widths, with depth/diameter ratios ranging from 1/5 at the simple-to-complex transition diameter (~7 km) to about 1/30 for a 100-km diameter crater. Another transition occurs at crater diameters of around 130 km as central peaks turn into concentric rings of hills to form multi-ring basins. Mars has the greatest diversity of impact crater types of any planet in the Solar System. This is partly because the presence of both rocky and volatile-rich layers in the subsurface produces a range of morphologies even among craters within the same size classes. Mars also has an atmosphere that plays a role in ejecta emplacement and subsequent erosion. Moreover, Mars has a rate of volcanic and tectonic activity low enough that ancient, eroded craters are still preserved, yet high enough to have resurfaced large areas, producing a diverse range of crater populations of widely differing ages. Over 42,000 impact craters greater than 5 km in diameter have been catalogued on Mars, and the number of smaller craters is probably innumerable. The density of craters on Mars is highest in the southern hemisphere, south of the dichotomy boundary. This is where most of the large craters and basins are located. Crater morphology provides information about the physical structure and composition of the surface and subsurface at the time of impact. For example, the size of central peaks in Martian craters is larger than comparable craters on Mercury or the Moon. In addition, the central peaks of many large craters on Mars have pit craters at their summits. Central pit craters are rare on the Moon but are very common on Mars and the icy satellites of the outer Solar System. Large central peaks and the abundance of pit craters probably indicate the presence of near-surface ice at the time of impact. Polewards of 30 degrees of latitude, the form of older impact craters is rounded out ("softened") by acceleration of soil creep by ground ice. The most notable difference between Martian craters and other craters in the Solar System is the presence of lobate (fluidized) ejecta blankets. Many craters at equatorial and mid-latitudes on Mars have this form of ejecta morphology, which is thought to arise when the impacting object melts ice in the subsurface. Liquid water in the ejected material forms a muddy slurry that flows along the surface, producing the characteristic lobe shapes. The crater Yuty is a good example of a rampart crater, which is so called because of the rampart-like edge to its ejecta blanket. Martian craters are commonly classified by their ejecta. Craters with one ejecta layer are called single-layer ejecta (SLE) craters. Craters with two superposed ejecta blankets are called double-layer ejecta (DLE) craters, and craters with more than two ejecta layers are called multiple-layered ejecta (MLE) craters. These morphological differences are thought to reflect compositional differences (i.e. interlayered ice, rock, or water) in the subsurface at the time of impact. Martian craters show a large diversity of preservational states, from extremely fresh to old and eroded. Degraded and infilled impact craters record variations in volcanic, fluvial, and eolian activity over geologic time. Pedestal craters are craters with their ejecta sitting above the surrounding terrain to form raised platforms. They occur because the crater's ejecta forms a resistant layer so that the area nearest the crater erodes more slowly than the rest of the region. Some pedestals were hundreds of meters above the surrounding area, meaning that hundreds of meters of material were eroded. Pedestal craters were first observed during the Mariner 9 mission in 1972. Volcanism Volcanic structures and landforms cover large parts of the Martian surface. The most conspicuous volcanoes on Mars are located in Tharsis and Elysium. Geologists think one of the reasons volcanoes on Mars were able to grow so large is that Mars has fewer tectonic boundaries in comparison to Earth. Lava from a stationary hot spot was able to accumulate at one location on the surface for many hundreds of millions of years. Scientists have never recorded an active volcano eruption on the surface of Mars. Searches for thermal signatures and surface changes within the last decade have not yielded evidence for active volcanism. On October 17, 2012, the Curiosity rover on the planet Mars at "Rocknest" performed the first X-ray diffraction analysis of Martian soil. The results from the rover's CheMin analyzer revealed the presence of several minerals, including feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine, and suggested that the Martian soil in the sample was similar to the "weathered basaltic soils" of Hawaiian volcanoes. In July 2015, the same rover identified tridymite in a rock sample from Gale Crater, leading scientists to conclude that silicic volcanism might have played a much more prevalent role in the planet's volcanic history than previously thought. Sedimentology Flowing water appears to have been common on the surface of Mars at various points in its history, and especially on ancient Mars. Many of these flows carved the surface, forming valley networks and producing sediment. This sediment has been redeposited in a wide variety of wet environments, including in alluvial fans, meandering channels, deltas, lakes, and perhaps even oceans. The processes of deposition and transportation are associated with gravity. Due to gravity, related differences in water fluxes and flow speeds, inferred from grain size distributions, Martian landscapes were created by different environmental conditions. Nevertheless, there are other ways of estimating the amount of water on ancient Mars (see: Water on Mars). Groundwater has been implicated in the cementation of aeolian sediments and the formation and transport of a wide variety of sedimentary minerals including clays, sulphates and hematite. When the surface has been dry, wind has been a major geomorphic agent. Wind driven sand bodies like megaripples and dunes are extremely common on the modern Martian surface, and Opportunity has documented abundant aeolian sandstones on its traverse. Ventifacts, like Jake Matijevic (rock), are another aeolian landform on the Martian Surface. A wide variety of other sedimentological facies are also present locally on Mars, including glacial deposits, hot springs, dry mass movement deposits (especially landslides), and cryogenic and periglacial material, amongst many others. Evidence for ancient rivers, a lake, and dune fields have all been observed in the preserved strata by rovers at Meridiani Planum and Gale crater. Common surface features Groundwater on Mars One group of researchers proposed that some of the layers on Mars were caused by groundwater rising to the surface in many places, especially inside of craters. According to the theory, groundwater with dissolved minerals came to the surface, in and later around craters, and helped to form layers by adding minerals (especially sulfate) and cementing sediments. This hypothesis is supported by a groundwater model and by sulfates discovered in a wide area. At first, by examining surface materials with Opportunity Rover, scientists discovered that groundwater had repeatedly risen and deposited sulfates. Later studies with instruments on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed that the same kinds of materials existed in a large area that included Arabia. Interesting geomorphological features On February 19, 2008, images obtained by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed a spectacular avalanche, in which debris thought to be fine-grained ice, dust, and large blocks fell from a 700-metre (2,300 ft) high cliff. Evidence of the avalanche included dust clouds rising from the cliff afterwards. Such geological events are theorized to be the cause of geologic patterns known as slope streaks. NASA scientists studying pictures from the Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what might be seven caves on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars. The pit entrances measure from 100 to 252 metres (328 to 827 ft) wide and they are thought to be at least 73 to 96 metres (240 to 315 ft) deep. See image below: the pits have been informally named (A) Dena, (B) Chloe, (C) Wendy, (D) Annie, (E) Abby (left) and Nikki, and (F) Jeanne. Dena's floor was observed and found to be 130 m deep. Further investigation suggested that these were not necessarily lava tube "skylights". Review of the images has resulted in yet more discoveries of deep pits. Recently, a global database (MGC3) of over 1,000 Martian cave candidates at Tharsis Montes has been developed by the USGS Astrogeology Science Center. In 2021, scientists are applying machine-learning algorithms to extend the MGC3 database across the entire surface of Mars. It has been suggested that human explorers on Mars could use lava tubes as shelters. The caves may be the only natural structures offering protection from the micrometeoroids, UV radiation, solar flares, and high energy particles that bombard the planet's surface. These features may enhance preservation of biosignatures over long periods of time and make caves an attractive astrobiology target in the search for evidence of life beyond Earth. Some areas of Mars show inverted relief, where features that were once depressions, like streams, are now above the surface. It is believed that materials like large rocks were deposited in low-lying areas. Later, wind erosion removed much of the surface layers, but left behind the more resistant deposits. Other ways of making inverted relief might be lava flowing down a stream bed or materials being cemented by minerals dissolved in water. On Earth, materials cemented by silica are highly resistant to all kinds of erosional forces. Examples of inverted channels on Earth are found in the Cedar Mountain Formation near Green River, Utah. Inverted relief in the shape of streams are further evidence of water flowing on the Martian surface in past times. Inverted relief in the form of stream channels suggests that the climate was different—much wetter—when the inverted channels were formed. In an article published in 2010, a large group of scientists endorsed the idea of searching for life in Miyamoto Crater because of inverted stream channels and minerals that indicated the past presence of water. Images of examples of inverted relief from various parts of Mars are shown below. See also References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/r/MinecraftCommands/comments/1rafwoy/how_to_easily_kill_a_lot_of_armor_stands_in_a/] | [TOKENS: 535] |
how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area my game has been getting very laggy due to the amount of armor stands that I haven't killed so a lot of things aren't working, so I need a way to kill armor stands in area multiple thousand blocks big it is very possible that unloaded entities doesn't affect lag and I just have way too many command blocks which, in that case I'm kinda screwed. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uquKok7Uz_h1q2Bzf4kqAfcf9o6w3Xr9/view?usp=sharing (a link to a picture of how many command blocks I have in my current area) Related Answers Section Survival mode in various games can be challenging, but using commands can significantly enhance your experience. Here are some of the most useful commands for survival mode across different games, as shared by Redditors: Scoreboard Commands: Useful for tracking progress and setting up custom objectives. "My most favourite would be /scoreboard for Multiplayer." Gamerules: Such as reducedDebugInfo or sleepingPercentage for multiplayer. "Also, maybe we could be able to set specific /gamerules (e.g. reducedDebugInfo which doesn't affect gameplay, or sleepingPercentage for Multiplayer, as that feels necessary sometimes)." Give Command: To get items, though some players consider this cheating. "I personally don’t use /give in my survival worlds, but it’s your world, do what you want." Command Blocks: For creating custom mechanics and decorations. "I recently discovered that you can more or less create anything by summoning different things in a command block." Toggle Survival Mode: To switch between survival and other modes. "After switching to Easy and invoking the (several) console commands to fix Emogene, I just had to enter one more console command: cgf \"Game.IncrementStat\" \"Survival Denied\" -1" Build Settlements: To create safe zones and supply lines. "Build up settlements, they'll all end up working as safehouses for you." Stealth and Sniping: For easier combat encounters. "Stealth sniping will be your best friend too." Juggernaut: A powerful item in some survival modes. "Juggernaut is the best thing in the game, it's 10k but is amazing." r/MinecraftCommands r/Fallout r/Minecraft These commands and tips can help you navigate the challenges of survival mode more effectively. Happy gaming! Create your account and connect with a world of communities. Anyone can view, post, and comment to this community |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster] | [TOKENS: 11412] |
Contents Space Shuttle Challenger disaster On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 16:39:13 UTC (11:39:13 a.m. EST, local time at the launch site). It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft while in flight. The mission, designated STS-51-L, was the 10th flight for the orbiter and the 25th flight of the Space Shuttle fleet. The crew was scheduled to deploy a commercial communications satellite and study Halley's Comet while they were in orbit, in addition to taking schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe into space under the Teacher in Space Project. The latter task resulted in a higher-than-usual media interest in and coverage of the mission; the launch and subsequent disaster were seen live in many schools across the United States. The cause of the disaster was the failure of the primary and secondary O-ring seals in a joint in the right Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). The record-low temperatures on the morning of the launch had stiffened the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal the joints. Shortly after liftoff, the seals were breached, and hot pressurized gas from within the SRB leaked through the joint and burned through the aft attachment strut connecting it to the external propellant tank (ET), then into the tank itself. The collapse of the ET's internal structures and the rotation of the SRB that followed propelled the shuttle stack, traveling at a speed of Mach 1.92, into a direction that allowed aerodynamic forces to tear the orbiter apart. Both SRBs detached from the now-destroyed ET and continued to fly uncontrollably until the range safety officer (RSO) destroyed them. The crew compartment, containing human remains, and many other fragments from the shuttle were recovered from the ocean floor after a three-month search and recovery operation. The exact timing of the deaths of the crew is unknown, but several crew members are thought to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft. The orbiter had no escape system, and the impact of the crew compartment at terminal velocity with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable. The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the Space Shuttle program. President Ronald Reagan created the Rogers Commission to investigate the accident. The commission criticized NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes that had contributed to the accident. Test data since 1977 had demonstrated a potentially catastrophic flaw in the SRBs' O-rings, but neither NASA nor SRB manufacturer Morton Thiokol had addressed this known defect. NASA managers also disregarded engineers' warnings about the dangers of launching in low temperatures and did not report these technical concerns to their superiors. As a result of this disaster, NASA established the Office of Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance, and arranged for deployment of commercial satellites from expendable launch vehicles rather than from a crewed orbiter. To replace Challenger, the construction of a new Space Shuttle orbiter, Endeavour, was approved in 1987, and the new orbiter first flew in 1992. Subsequent missions were launched with redesigned SRBs and their crews wore pressurized suits during ascent and reentry. In February 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry; the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that NASA had failed to learn many lessons from the Challenger disaster, which resulted in the second disaster. Background The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable spacecraft operated by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).: 5, 195 It flew for the first time in April 1981,: III–24 and was used to conduct in-orbit research,: III–188 and deploy commercial,: III–66 military,: III–68 and scientific payloads.: III–148 At launch, it consisted of the orbiter, which contained the crew and payload, the external tank (ET), and the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs).: 363 The orbiter was a reusable, winged vehicle that launched vertically and landed as a glider.: II-1 Five orbiters were built during the Space Shuttle program.: 5 Challenger (OV-099) was the second orbiter constructed after its conversion from a structural test article.: I-455 The orbiter contained the crew compartment, where the crew predominantly lived and worked throughout a mission.: II-5 Three Space Shuttle main engines (SSMEs) were mounted at the aft end of the orbiter and provided thrust during launch.: II-170 Once in space, the crew maneuvered using the two smaller, aft-mounted Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines.: II-79 When it launched, the orbiter was connected to the ET, which held the fuel for the SSMEs.: II-222 The ET consisted of a larger tank for liquid hydrogen (LH2) and a smaller tank for liquid oxygen (LOX), both of which were required for the SSMEs to operate.: II-222, II-226 After its fuel had been expended, the ET separated from the orbiter and reentered the atmosphere, where it would break apart during reentry and its pieces would land in the Indian or Pacific Ocean.: II-238 Two solid rocket boosters (SRBs), built by Morton Thiokol at the time of the disaster,: 9–10 provided the majority of thrust at liftoff. They were connected to the external tank, and burned for the first two minutes of flight.: II-222 The SRBs separated from the orbiter once they had expended their fuel and fell into the Atlantic Ocean under a parachute.: II-289 NASA retrieval teams recovered the SRBs and returned them to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where they were disassembled and their components were reused on future flights.: II-292 Each SRB was constructed in four main sections at the factory in Utah and transported to KSC, then assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC with three tang-and-clevis field joints, each joint consisting of a tang from the upper segment fitting into the clevis of the lower segment. Each field joint was sealed with two 20-foot (6 m) diameter Viton-rubber O-rings around the circumference of the SRB and had a cross-section diameter of 0.280 inches (7.1 mm).: 48 The O-rings were required to contain the hot, high-pressure gases produced by the burning solid propellant and allowed for the SRBs to be rated for crewed missions.: 24 : 420 The two O-rings were configured to create a double bore seal, and the gap between segments was filled with putty. When the motor was running, this configuration was designed to compress air in the gap against the upper O-ring, pressing it against the sealing surfaces of its seat. On the SRB Critical Items List, the O-rings were listed as Criticality 1R, which indicated that an O-ring failure could result in the destruction of the vehicle and loss of life, and that it was considered a redundant system due to the secondary O-ring.: 126 Evaluations of the proposed SRB design in the early 1970s and field joint testing showed that the wide tolerances between the mated parts allowed the O-rings to be extruded from their seats rather than compressed. This extrusion was judged to be acceptable by NASA and Morton Thiokol despite concerns of NASA's engineers.: 122–123 A 1977 test showed that up to 0.052 inches (1.3 mm) of joint rotation occurred during the simulated internal pressure of a launch. Joint rotation, which occurred when the tang and clevis bent away from each other, reduced the pressure on the O-rings, which weakened their seals and made it possible for combustion gases to erode the O-rings.: 123–124 NASA engineers suggested that the field joints should be redesigned to include shims around the O-rings, but they received no response.: 124–125 In 1980, the NASA Verification/Certification Committee requested further tests on joint integrity to include testing in the temperature range of 40 to 90 °F (4 to 32 °C) and with only a single O-ring installed. The NASA program managers decided that their current level of testing was sufficient and further testing was not required. In December 1982, the Critical Items List was updated to indicate that the secondary O-ring could not provide a backup to the primary O-ring, as it would not necessarily form a seal in the event of joint rotation. The O-rings were redesignated as Criticality 1, removing the "R" to indicate it was no longer considered a redundant system.: 125–127 : 66 The first occurrence of in-flight O-ring erosion occurred on the right SRB on STS-2 in November 1981.: 126 In August 1984, a post-flight inspection of the left SRB on STS-41-D revealed that soot had blown past the primary O-ring and was found in between the O-rings. Although there was no damage to the secondary O-ring, this indicated that the primary O-ring was not creating a reliable seal and was allowing hot gas to pass. The amount of O-ring erosion was insufficient to prevent the O-ring from sealing, and investigators concluded that the soot between the O-rings resulted from non-uniform pressure at the time of ignition.: 130 : 39–42 The January 1985 launch of STS-51-C was the coldest Space Shuttle launch to date. The air temperature was 62 °F (17 °C) at the time of launch, and the calculated O-ring temperature was 53 °F (12 °C). Post-flight analysis revealed erosion in primary O-rings in both SRBs. Morton Thiokol engineers determined that the cold temperatures caused a loss of flexibility in the O-rings that decreased their ability to seal the field joints, which allowed hot gas and soot to flow past the primary O-ring.: 47 O-ring erosion occurred on all but one (STS-51-J) of the Space Shuttle flights in 1985, and erosion of both the primary and secondary O-rings occurred on STS-51-B.: 131 : 50–52, 63 To correct the issues with O-ring erosion, engineers at Morton Thiokol, led by Allan McDonald and Roger Boisjoly, proposed a redesigned field joint that introduced a metal lip to limit movement in the joint. They also recommended adding a spacer to provide additional thermal protection and using an O-ring with a larger cross section.: 67−69 In July 1985, Morton Thiokol ordered redesigned SRB casings, with the intention of using already-manufactured casings for the upcoming launches until the redesigned cases were available the following year.: 62 The Space Shuttle mission, named STS-51-L, was the twenty-fifth Space Shuttle flight and the tenth flight of Challenger.: 6 The crew was announced on January 27, 1985, and was commanded by Dick Scobee. Michael Smith was assigned as the pilot, and the mission specialists were Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, and Ronald McNair. The two payload specialists were Gregory Jarvis, who was assigned to conduct research for the Hughes Aircraft Company, and Christa McAuliffe, who flew as part of the Teacher in Space Project.: 10–13 The primary mission of the Challenger crew was to use an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) to deploy TDRS-B, a tracking and data relay satellite. The crew also planned to study Halley's Comet as it passed near the Sun,: III-76 and deploy and retrieve the Spartan Halley satellite. The mission was originally scheduled for July 1985, but was delayed to November and then to January 1986.: 10 The launch date was initially set for January 22, but this was delayed several times while the shuttle waited on the launch pad. On December 23, 1985, due to delays in preparations for STS-61-C, the launch was pushed back to January 23. On January 22, the mission was postponed until January 26 due to dust storms at the shuttle's emergency landing site, Dakar-Yoff International Airport in Senegal. NASA chose Mohammed V International Airport in Casablanca, Morocco, as an alternative emergency site, but a lack of runway lighting there meant that the shuttle now could only launch when it was daytime in Morocco and morning in Florida. The launch was postponed again by one day when thunderstorms near Cape Canaveral were forecast for January 26; the weather turned out to be clear at the intended launch time, but storms came in shortly thereafter. The shuttle was prepared to launch on January 27, but the countdown was halted at T–9 minutes when the crew cabin's door handle could not be removed due to a stuck bolt, preventing the needed insulation tile from being installed in its place. By the time the bolt had been removed, high winds at Cape Canaveral prevented the launch, as they would have made a RTLS abort dangerous if it were needed. The winds continued until the morning's launch window closed at 12:37 p.m. EST, causing one final postponement to January 28. While all of these delays were necessitated by safety concerns, the increased publicity surrounding the mission because of the Teacher in Space Program led major media outlets to ridicule the repeated postponements of the launch. On the evening of January 27, CBS's Dan Rather called the bolt issue a "high-tech low comedy", while other outlets highlighted the frustration of spectators who had been waiting for the launch that day. This negative media coverage was later cited as one of several factors which pressured NASA officials to ignore potential issues with the O-rings so that Challenger could launch as soon as possible. Decision to launch The air temperature on January 28 was predicted to be a record low for a Space Shuttle launch.: 47, 101 The air temperature was forecast to drop to 18 °F (−8 °C) overnight before rising to 22 °F (−6 °C) at 6:00 a.m. and 26 °F (−3 °C) at the scheduled launch time of 9:38 a.m.: 87 : 96 Based upon O-ring erosion that had occurred in warmer launches, Morton Thiokol engineers were concerned over the effect the record-cold temperatures would have on the seal provided by the SRB O-rings for the launch.: 101–103 Cecil Houston, the manager of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) office of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, set up a three-way conference call with Morton Thiokol in Utah and the KSC in Florida on the evening of January 27 to discuss the safety of the launch. Morton Thiokol engineers expressed their concerns about the effect of low temperatures on the resilience of the rubber O-rings. As the colder temperatures lowered the elasticity of the rubber O-rings, the engineers feared that the O-rings would not be extruded to form a seal at the time of launch.: 97–99 The engineers argued that they did not have enough data to determine whether the O-rings would seal at temperatures colder than 53 °F (12 °C), the coldest launch of the Space Shuttle to date.: 105–106 During this discussion, Lawrence Mulloy, the NASA SRB project manager,: 3 said that he did not accept the analysis behind this decision, and demanded to know if Morton Thiokol expected him to wait until April for warmer temperatures.: 104 Morton Thiokol employees Robert Lund, the Vice President of Engineering, and Joe Kilminster, the Vice President of the Space Booster Programs, recommended against launching until the temperature was above 53 °F (12 °C).: 107–108 When the teleconference prepared to hold a recess to allow for private discussion amongst Morton Thiokol management, Allan J. McDonald, Morton Thiokol's Director of the Space Shuttle SRM Project who was sitting at the KSC end of the call,: 110 reminded his colleagues in Utah to examine the interaction between delays in the primary O-rings sealing relative to the ability of the secondary O-rings to provide redundant backup, believing this would add enough to the engineering analysis to get Mulloy to stop accusing the engineers of using inconclusive evidence to try and delay the launch.: 105 When the call resumed, Morton Thiokol leadership had changed their opinion and stated that the evidence presented on the failure of the O-rings was inconclusive and that there was a substantial margin in the event of a failure or erosion. They stated that their decision was to proceed with the launch. When McDonald told Mulloy that, as the onsite representative at KSC he would not sign off on the decision, Mulloy demanded that Morton Thiokol provide a signed recommendation to launch; Kilminster confirmed that he would sign it and fax it from Utah immediately, and the teleconference ended.: 97, 109–110 Mulloy called Arnold Aldrich, the NASA Mission Management Team Leader, to discuss the launch decision and weather concerns, but did not mention the O-ring discussion; the two agreed to proceed with the launch.: 99 : 116 An overnight measurement taken by the KSC Ice Team recorded the left SRB was 25 °F (−4 °C) and the right SRB was 8 °F (−13 °C).: 111 These measurements were recorded for engineering data and not reported, because the temperature of the SRBs was not part of the Launch Commit Criteria.: 118 In addition to its effect on the O-rings, the cold temperatures caused ice to form on the fixed service structure. To keep pipes from freezing, water was slowly run from the system; it could not be entirely drained because of the upcoming launch. As a result, ice formed from 240 feet (73 m) down in the freezing temperatures. Engineers at Rockwell International, which manufactured the orbiter, were concerned that ice would be violently thrown during launch and could potentially damage the orbiter's thermal protection system or be aspirated into one of the engines. Rocco Petrone, the head of Rockwell's space transportation division, and his team determined that the potential damage from ice made the mission unsafe to fly. Arnold Aldrich consulted with engineers at KSC and the Johnson Space Center (JSC) who advised him that ice did not threaten the safety of the orbiter, and he decided to proceed with the launch.: 115–118 The launch was delayed for an additional hour to allow more ice to melt. The ice team performed an inspection at T−20 minutes which indicated that the ice was melting, and Challenger was cleared to launch at 11:38 a.m. EST, with an air temperature of 36 °F (2 °C).: 17 Launch and failure At T+0, Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B (LC-39B) at 11:38:00 a.m.: 17 : III–76 Beginning at T+0.678 until T+3.375 seconds, nine puffs of dark gray smoke were recorded escaping from the right-hand SRB near the aft strut that attached the booster to the ET.: 19 : III-93 It was later determined that these smoke puffs were caused by joint rotation in the aft field joint of the right-hand SRB at ignition.: 136 The cold temperature in the joint had prevented the O-rings from creating a seal. Rainfall from the preceding time on the launchpad had likely accumulated within the field joint, further compromising the sealing capability of the O-rings. As a result, hot gas was able to travel past the O-rings and erode them. Molten aluminum oxides from the burned propellant unintentionally resealed the joint and created a temporary barrier against further hot gas and flame escaping through the field joint.: 142 The Space Shuttle main engines (SSMEs) were throttled down as scheduled for maximum dynamic pressure (max q).: III–8–9 During its ascent, the Space Shuttle encountered wind shear conditions beginning at T+37, but they were within design limits of the vehicle and were countered by the guidance system.: 20 At T+58.788, a tracking film camera captured the beginnings of a plume near the aft attach strut on the right SRB, right before the vehicle passed through max q at T+59.000. The high aerodynamic forces and wind shear likely broke the unintentional aluminum oxide seal that had replaced eroded O-rings, allowing the flame to burn through the joint.: 142 Within one second from when it was first recorded, the plume became well-defined, and the enlarging hole caused a drop in internal pressure in the right SRB. A leak had begun in the liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank of the ET at T+64.660, as indicated by the changing shape of the plume. The SSMEs pivoted to compensate for the booster burn-through, which was creating an unexpected thrust on the vehicle. The pressure in the external LH2 tank began to drop at T+66.764 indicating that the flame had burned from the SRB into the tank. The crew and flight controllers made no indication they were aware of the vehicle and flight anomalies. At T+68, the CAPCOM, Richard O. Covey, told the crew, "Challenger, go at throttle up," indicating that the SSMEs had throttled up to 104% thrust.[note 1] In response to Covey, Scobee said, "Roger, go at throttle up"; this was the last communication from Challenger on the air-to-ground loop. At T+72.284, the right SRB pulled away from the aft strut that attached it to the ET, causing lateral acceleration that was felt by the crew. At the same time, pressure in the LH2 tank began dropping. Pilot Mike Smith said "Uh-oh," which was the last crew comment recorded. At T+73.124, white vapor was seen flowing away from the ET, after which the aft dome of the LH2 tank fell off. The resulting release and ignition of all liquid hydrogen in the tank pushed the LH2 tank forward into the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank with a force equating to roughly 3,000,000 pounds (13 MN), while the right SRB collided with the intertank structure. The failure of the LH2 and LOX tanks resulted in a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE), with a large part of the liquid evaporating back into gas almost instantly.: 305 These events resulted in an abrupt change to the shuttle stack's attitude and direction, which was shrouded from view by the vaporized contents of the now-destroyed ET. As it traveled at Mach 1.92, Challenger took aerodynamic forces it was not designed to withstand and broke into several large pieces: a wing, the (still firing) main engines, the crew cabin and hypergolic fuel leaking from the ruptured reaction control system were among the parts identified exiting the vapor cloud. The disaster unfolded at an altitude of 46,000 feet (14 km).: 21 Both SRBs survived the breakup of the shuttle stack and continued flying, now unguided by the attitude and trajectory control of their mothership, until their flight termination systems were activated at T+110.: 30 At T+73.191, there was a burst of static on the air-to-ground loop as the vehicle broke up, which was later attributed to ground-based radios searching for a signal from the destroyed spacecraft. NASA Public Affairs Officer Steve Nesbitt was initially unaware of the explosion and continued to read out flight information. At T+89, after video of the explosion was seen in Mission Control, the Ground Control Officer reported "negative contact (and) loss of downlink" as they were no longer receiving transmissions from Challenger. Nesbitt stated, "Flight controllers here are looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction. We have no downlink." Soon afterwards, he said, "We have a report from the Flight Dynamics Officer that the vehicle has exploded. The flight director confirms that. We are looking at checking with the recovery forces to see what can be done at this point." In Mission Control, flight director Jay Greene ordered that contingency procedures be put into effect, which included locking the doors, shutting down telephone communications, and freezing computer terminals to collect data from them.: 122 The crew cabin, which was made of reinforced aluminum, separated in one piece from the rest of the orbiter. It then traveled in a ballistic arc, reaching an apogee of 65,000 feet (20 km) approximately 25 seconds after the explosion. At the time of separation, the maximum acceleration is estimated to have been between 12 and 20 times that of gravity (g). Within two seconds it had dropped below 4 g, and within ten seconds the cabin was in free fall. The forces involved at this stage were probably insufficient to cause major injury to the crew. At least some of the crew were alive and conscious after the breakup, as Personal Egress Air Packs (PEAPs) were activated for Smith: 246 and two unidentified crewmembers, but not for Scobee. The PEAPs were not intended for in-flight use, and the astronauts never trained with them for an in-flight emergency. The location of Smith's activation switch, on the back side of his seat, indicated that either Resnik or Onizuka likely activated it for him. Investigators found their remaining unused air supply consistent with the expected consumption during the post-breakup trajectory.: 245–247 While analyzing the wreckage, investigators discovered that several electrical system switches on Smith's right-hand panel had been moved from their usual launch positions. The switches had lever locks on top of them that must be pulled out before the switch could be moved. Later tests established that neither the force of the explosion nor the impact with the ocean could have moved them, indicating that Smith made the switch changes, presumably in a futile attempt to restore electrical power to the cockpit after the crew cabin detached from the rest of the orbiter.: 245 On July 28, 1986, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Flight, former astronaut Richard H. Truly, released a report on the deaths of the crew from physician and Skylab 2 astronaut Joseph P. Kerwin: The findings are inconclusive. The impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface was so violent that evidence of damage occurring in the seconds which followed the disintegration was masked. Our final conclusions are: Pressurization could have enabled consciousness for the entire fall until impact. The crew cabin hit the ocean surface at 207 mph (333 km/h) approximately 2 minutes and 45 seconds after breakup. The estimated deceleration was 200 g, far exceeding structural limits of the crew compartment or crew survivability levels. The mid-deck floor had not suffered buckling or tearing, as would result from a rapid decompression, but stowed equipment showed damage consistent with decompression, and debris was embedded between the two forward windows that may have caused a loss of pressure. Impact damage to the crew cabin was severe enough that it could not be determined whether the crew cabin had previously been damaged enough to lose pressurization. Unlike other spacecraft, the Space Shuttle did not allow for crew escape during powered flight. Launch escape systems had been considered during development, but NASA's conclusion was that the Space Shuttle's expected high reliability would preclude the need for one.: 181 Modified SR-71 Blackbird ejection seats and full pressure suits were used for the two-person crews on the first four Space Shuttle orbital test flights, but they were disabled and later removed for the operational flights.: II-7 Escape options for the operational flights were considered but not implemented due to their complexity, high cost, and heavy weight.: 181 After the disaster, a system was implemented to allow the crew to escape in gliding flight, but this system would not have been usable to escape an explosion during ascent. Recovery of debris and crew Immediately after the disaster, the NASA Launch Recovery Director launched the two SRB recovery ships, MV Freedom Star and MV Liberty Star, to proceed to the impact area to recover debris, and requested the support of US military aircraft and ships. Owing to falling debris from the explosion, the Range Safety Officer (RSO) kept recovery forces from the impact area until 12:37 p.m. The size of the recovery operations increased to 12 aircraft and 8 ships by 7:00 p.m. Surface operations recovered debris from the orbiter and external tank. The surface recovery operations ended on February 7. On January 31, the US Navy was tasked with submarine recovery operations.: 5 The search efforts prioritized the recovery of the right SRB, followed by the crew compartment, and then the remaining payload, orbiter pieces, and ET.: 16 The search for debris formally began on February 8 with the rescue and salvage ship USS Preserver, and eventually grew to sixteen ships, of which three were managed by NASA, four by the US Navy, one by the US Air Force and eight by independent contractors.: 4–5 The surface ships used side-scan sonar to make the initial search for debris and covered 486 square nautical miles (1,670 km2) at water depths between 70 and 1,200 feet (20 and 370 m).: 24 The sonar operations discovered 881 potential locations for debris, of which 187 pieces were later confirmed to be from the orbiter.: 24 The debris from the SRBs was widely distributed due to the detonation of their linear shaped charges. The identification of SRB material was primarily conducted by crewed submarines and submersibles. The vehicles were dispatched to investigate potential debris located during the search phase.: 32 Surface ships lifted the SRB debris with the help of technical divers and underwater remotely operated vehicles to attach the necessary slings to raise the debris with cranes.: 37, 42 The solid propellant in the SRBs posed a risk, as it became more volatile after being submerged. Recovered portions of the SRBs were kept wet during recovery, and their unused propellant was ignited once they were brought ashore. The failed joint on the right SRB was first located on sonar on March 1. Subsequent dives to 560 ft (170 m) by the NR-1 submarine on April 5 and the SEA-LINK I submersible on April 12 confirmed that it was the damaged field joint,: 42 and it was successfully recovered on April 13. Of the 196,726 lb (89,233 kg) of both SRB shells, 102,500 lb (46,500 kg) was recovered, another 54,000 lb (24,000 kg) was found but not recovered, and 40,226 lb (18,246 kg) was never found.: 44 On March 7, Air Force divers identified potential crew compartment debris, which was confirmed the next day by divers from the USS Preserver.: 51 The damage to the crew compartment indicated that it had remained largely intact during the initial explosion but was extensively damaged on impacting the ocean. The remains of the crew were badly damaged from impact and submersion, and were not intact bodies. The USS Preserver made multiple trips to return debris and remains to port, and continued crew compartment recovery until April 4.: 51 During the recovery of the remains of the crew, Jarvis's body floated away and was not located until April 15, several weeks after the other remains had been positively identified. Once remains were brought to port, pathologists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology worked to identify the human remains, but could not determine the exact cause of death for any of them. Medical examiners in Brevard County disputed the legality of transferring human remains to US military officials to conduct autopsies, and refused to issue the death certificates; NASA officials ultimately released the death certificates of the crew members. The IUS that would have been used to boost the orbit of the TDRS-B satellite was one of the first pieces of debris recovered.: 51 There was no indication that there had been premature ignition of the IUS, which had been one of the suspected causes for the disaster.: 50 Debris from the three SSMEs was recovered from February 14 to 28,: 51 and post-recovery analysis produced results consistent with functional engines suddenly losing their LH2 fuel supply. Deepwater recovery operations continued until April 29, with smaller scale, shallow recovery operations continuing until August 29.: 51 On December 17, 1996, two pieces of the orbiter were found at Cocoa Beach. On November 10, 2022, NASA announced that a 20-foot (6 m) piece of the shuttle had been found near the site of a destroyed World War II-era aircraft off the coast of Florida. The discovery was aired on the History Channel on November 22, 2022. Almost all recovered non-organic debris from Challenger is buried in Cape Canaveral Space Force Station missile silos at LC-31 and LC-32. On April 29, 1986, the astronauts' remains were transferred on a C-141 Starlifter aircraft from Kennedy Space Center to the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Their caskets were each draped with an American flag and carried past an honor guard and followed by an astronaut escort. After the remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base, they were transferred to the families of the crew members. Scobee and Smith were buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Onizuka was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. McNair was buried in Rest Lawn Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina, but his remains were later moved within the town to the Dr. Ronald E. McNair Memorial Park. Resnik was cremated and her ashes were scattered over the water. McAuliffe was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire. Jarvis was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Unidentified crew remains were buried at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in Arlington on May 20, 1986. Public response President Ronald Reagan had been scheduled to give the 1986 State of the Union Address on January 28, 1986, the evening of the Challenger disaster. After a discussion with his aides, Reagan postponed the State of the Union, and instead addressed the nation about the disaster from the Oval Office. On January 31, Ronald and Nancy Reagan traveled to the Johnson Space Center to speak at a memorial service honoring the crew members. During the ceremony, an Air Force band sang "God Bless America" as NASA T-38 Talon jets flew directly over the scene in the traditional missing-man formation. Soon after the disaster, Democratic politicians claimed that White House officials, including Chief of Staff Donald Regan and Communications Director Pat Buchanan, had pressured NASA to launch Challenger before the scheduled January 28 State of the Union address, because Reagan had planned to mention the launch in his remarks. In March 1986, the White House released a copy of the original State of the Union speech. In that speech, Reagan had intended to mention an X-ray experiment launched on Challenger and designed by a guest he had invited to the address, but he did not further discuss the Challenger launch. In the rescheduled State of the Union address on February 4, Reagan mentioned the deceased Challenger crew members and modified his remarks about the X-ray experiment as "launched and lost". In April 1986, the White House released a report that concluded there had been no pressure from the White House for NASA to launch Challenger prior to the State of the Union. Nationally televised live coverage of the launch and explosion was provided by CNN. To promote the Teacher in Space program with McAuliffe as a crewmember, NASA had arranged for many students in the US to view the launch live at school with their teachers. Other networks, such as CBS, soon cut in to their affiliate feeds to broadcast continuous coverage of the disaster and its aftermath. Press interest in the disaster increased in the following days; the number of reporters at KSC increased from 535 on the day of the launch to 1,467 reporters three days later. In the aftermath of the accident, NASA was criticized for not making key personnel available to the press. In the absence of information, the press published articles suggesting the external tank was the cause of the explosion. Until 2010, CNN's live broadcast was the only known footage filmed from the launch site. Additional amateur and professional recordings have since become publicly available. In the Soviet Union, footage of the disaster was played on the news, with coverage reflecting a tone that was described as being "somber and sympathetic" and "for the most part free of political overtones." The Challenger accident has been used as a case study for subjects such as engineering safety, the ethics of whistleblowing, communications and group decision-making, and the dangers of groupthink. Roger Boisjoly and Allan McDonald became speakers who advocated for responsible workplace decision making and engineering ethics. Information designer Edward Tufte has argued that the Challenger accident was the result of poor communications and overly complicated explanations on the part of engineers, and stated that showing the correlation of ambient air temperature and O-ring erosion amounts would have been sufficient to communicate the potential dangers of the cold-weather launch. Boisjoly and others contested this assertion and stated that the data presented by Tufte was not as simple or available as Tufte stated. Reports The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, also known as the Rogers Commission after its chairman, was formed on February 6.: 206 Its members were Chairman William P. Rogers, Vice Chairman Neil Armstrong, David Acheson, Eugene Covert, Richard Feynman, Robert Hotz, Donald Kutyna, Sally Ride, Robert Rummel, Joseph Sutter, Arthur Walker, Albert Wheelon, and Chuck Yeager.: iii–iv The commission held hearings that discussed the NASA accident investigation, the Space Shuttle program, and the Morton Thiokol recommendation to launch despite O-ring safety issues. On February 15, Rogers released a statement that established the commission's changing role to investigate the accident independent of NASA due to concerns of the failures of the internal processes at NASA. The commission created four investigative panels to research the different aspects of the mission. The Accident Analysis Panel, chaired by Kutyna, used data from salvage operations and testing to determine the exact cause behind the accident. The Development and Production Panel, chaired by Sutter, investigated the hardware contractors and how they interacted with NASA. The Pre-Launch Activities Panel, chaired by Acheson, focused on the final assembly processes and pre-launch activities conducted at KSC. The Mission Planning and Operations Panel, chaired by Ride, investigated the planning that went into mission development, along with potential concerns over crew safety and pressure to adhere to a schedule. Over a period of four months, the commission interviewed over 160 individuals, held at least 35 investigative sessions, and involved more than 6,000 NASA employees, contractors, and support personnel.: 206−208 The commission published its report on June 6, 1986.: iii–iv The commission determined that the cause of the accident was hot gas blowing past the O-rings in the field joint on the right SRB, and found no other potential causes for the disaster.: 71 It attributed the accident to a faulty design of the field joint that was unacceptably sensitive to changes in temperature, dynamic loading, and the character of its materials.: 71 The report was critical of NASA and Morton Thiokol, and emphasized that both organizations had overlooked evidence that indicated the potential danger with the SRB field joints. It noted that NASA accepted the risk of O-ring erosion without evaluating how it could potentially affect the safety of a mission.: 149 The commission concluded that the safety culture and management structure at NASA were insufficient to properly report, analyze, and prevent flight issues.: 162 It stated that the pressure to increase the rate of flights negatively affected the amount of training, quality control, and repair work that was available for each mission.: 177 The commission published a series of recommendations to improve the safety of the Space Shuttle program. It proposed a redesign of the joints in the SRB that would prevent gas from blowing past the O-rings. It also recommended that the program's management be restructured to keep project managers from being pressured to adhere to unsafe organizational deadlines, and should include astronauts to address crew safety concerns better. It proposed that an office for safety be established reporting directly to the NASA administrator to oversee all safety, reliability, and quality assurance functions in NASA programs. Additionally, the commission addressed issues with overall safety and maintenance for the orbiter, and it recommended the addition of the means for the crew to escape during controlled gliding flight.: 198–200 During a televised hearing on February 11, Feynman demonstrated the loss of rubber's elasticity in cold temperatures using a glass of cold water and a piece of rubber, for which he received media attention. Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, advocated for harsher criticism towards NASA in the report and repeatedly disagreed with Rogers. He threatened to remove his name from the report unless it included his personal observations on reliability, which appeared as Appendix F. In the appendix, he lauded the engineering and software accomplishments in the program's development, but he argued that multiple components, including the avionics and SSMEs in addition to the SRBs, were more dangerous and accident-prone than original NASA estimates had indicated. The US House Committee on Science and Technology conducted an investigation of the Challenger disaster and released a report on October 29, 1986.: i The committee, which had authorized the funding for the Space Shuttle program, reviewed the findings of the Rogers Commission as part of its investigation. The committee agreed with the Rogers Commission that the failed SRB field joint was the cause of the accident, and that NASA and Morton Thiokol failed to act despite numerous warnings of the potential dangers of the SRB. The committee's report further emphasized safety considerations of other components and recommended a risk management review for all critical systems.: 2–5 NASA response In response to the commission's recommendation, NASA initiated a redesign of the SRB, later named the redesigned solid rocket motor (RSRM), which was supervised by an independent oversight group.: 198 : III-101 The redesigned joint included a capture feature on the tang around the interior wall of the clevis to prevent joint rotation. The space between the capture feature and the clevis was sealed with another O-ring. The capture feature reduced the potential of joint rotation to 15% of that which had occurred during the disaster. Should joint rotation occur, any rotation that reduced the O-ring seal on one side of the clevis wall would increase it on the other side. Additionally, heaters were installed to maintain consistent, higher temperatures of the O-rings.: 429–430 The RSRM was first tested on August 30, 1987. In April and August 1988, the RSRM was tested with intentional flaws that allowed hot gas to penetrate the field joint. These tests permitted the engineers to evaluate whether the improved field joint prevented joint rotation. Following the successful tests, the RSRM was certified to fly on the Space Shuttle.: III-101 In addition to the SRBs, NASA increased the safety standards on other Space Shuttle program components. The critical items lists and failure modes for the SSMEs were updated, along with 18 hardware changes. The maximum thrust of the SSMEs was limited to 104%, with 109% only allowed in an abort scenario.: II-172 The landing gear was updated to improve its steering and handling abilities while the Space Shuttle was landing.: III-101 NASA implemented an escape option in which the astronauts would jettison the side hatch and extend a pole out of the orbiter; they would slide down the pole to avoid hitting the orbiter as they bailed out before they activated their parachutes. The orbiter's software was modified to maintain stable flight while all of the flight crew left the controls to escape.: III-103 This escape method would not have saved the crew in the Challenger disaster, but was added in the event of another emergency.: III-102 In 1986 NASA created a new Office of Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance, headed by a NASA associate administrator who reported directly to the NASA administrator, as the commission had specified.: 199 Former Challenger flight director Greene became chief of the Safety Division of the directorate. After the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) concluded that NASA had not set up a "truly independent" office for safety oversight.: 178–180 The CAIB concluded that the ineffective safety culture that had resulted in the Challenger accident was also responsible for the subsequent disaster.: 195 The Teacher in Space program, which McAuliffe had been selected for, was canceled in 1990 as a result of the Challenger disaster. In 1998, NASA replaced Teacher in Space with the Educator Astronaut Project, which differed in that it required the teachers to become professional astronauts trained as mission specialists, rather than short-term payload specialists who would return to their classrooms following their spaceflight. Barbara Morgan, who had been the backup teacher for McAuliffe, was selected to be part of NASA Astronaut Group 17 and flew on STS-118.: III-116 The projected launch schedule of 24 per year was criticized by the Rogers Commission as an unrealistic goal that created unnecessary pressure on NASA to launch missions.: 165 In August 1986, President Reagan approved the construction of an orbiter, which would later be named Endeavour, to replace Challenger. Construction of Endeavour began in 1987 and was completed in 1990, and it first flew on STS-49 in May 1992. He also announced that the program would no longer carry commercial satellite payloads, and that these would be launched using commercial expendable launch vehicles. These commercial payloads were reallocated from the Space Shuttle program to end the dependence on a single launch vehicle and limit the pressure on NASA to launch crewed missions to satisfy its customers. The Space Shuttle fleet was grounded for two years and eight months while the program underwent investigation, redesign, and restructuring. On September 29, 1988, Discovery launched on STS-26 mission from LC-39B with a crew of five veteran astronauts. Its payload was TDRS-3, which was a substitute for the satellite lost with Challenger. The launch tested the redesigned boosters, and the crew wore pressure suits during the ascent and reentry. The mission was a success, and the program resumed flying. On February 1, 2003, the program had its second accident when Columbia disintegrated during reentry during STS-107, killing all seven crew members on board. The cause was bipod foam from the external tank striking the orbiter's left wing during launch. Once again, NASA's organizational culture was heavily scrutinized. As with the O-ring erosion, NASA did not consider foam strikes to be a potential risk to the astronauts, despite multiple instances of foam strikes on previous missions. In addition, scheduling issues had once again risen, as NASA was under internal pressure to adhere to a launch schedule for assembling the International Space Station. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) concluded that NASA had failed to learn many lessons from the Challenger disaster, stating: "NASA's response to the Rogers Commission did not meet the Commission's intent" and "the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed.": 178, 195 The Space Shuttle returned to flight in 2005 with STS-114. Legacy In 2004, President George W. Bush conferred posthumous Congressional Space Medals of Honor to all 14 crew members killed in the Challenger and Columbia accidents. An unpainted decorative oval in the Brumidi Corridors of the United States Capitol was finished with a portrait depicting the crew by Charles Schmidt in 1987. The scene was painted on canvas and then applied to the wall. The "Forever Remembered" exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex opened in July 2015 and includes a display of a 12-foot (3.7 m) section of Challenger's recovered fuselage. The exhibit was opened by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden along with family members of the crew.: III-97 A tree for each astronaut was planted in NASA's Astronaut Memorial Grove at the Johnson Space Center, along with trees for each astronaut from the Apollo 1 and Columbia disasters. Seven asteroids were named after the crew members: 3350 Scobee, 3351 Smith, 3352 McAuliffe, 3353 Jarvis, 3354 McNair, 3355 Onizuka, and 3356 Resnik. The approved naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on March 26, 1986 (M.P.C. 10550). In 1988, seven craters on the far side of the Moon, within the Apollo Basin, were named after the astronauts by the IAU. The Soviet Union named two craters on Venus after McAuliffe and Resnik. The landing site of the Opportunity Mars rover was named Challenger Memorial Station. Several memorials have been established in honor of the Challenger disaster. The public Peers Park in Palo Alto, California, features the Challenger Memorial Grove including redwood trees grown from seeds carried aboard Challenger in 1985. Schools and streets have been renamed to include the names of the crew or Challenger. In 1990, a 1/10 scale replica of Challenger in liftoff position was erected in Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles, California. Challenger Point is a mountain peak of the Sangre de Cristo Range. The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, a science museum and planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire, is named in honor of McAuliffe, a Concord High School teacher, and Alan Shepard, who was from Derry, New Hampshire. The crew's families established the Challenger Center for Space Science Education as an educational non-profit organization. An American flag, later named the Challenger flag, was carried aboard the Challenger. It was sponsored by Boy Scout Troop 514 of Monument, Colorado, and was recovered intact, still sealed in its plastic container. Onizuka had included a soccer ball with his personal effects that was recovered and later flown to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz Expedition 49 by American astronaut Shane Kimbrough. It is on display at Clear Lake High School in Houston, which was attended by Onizuka's children. The 1986 motion picture Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was dedicated to the crew of the Challenger with an opening message which stated "The cast and crew of Star Trek wish to dedicate this film to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger whose courageous spirit shall live to the 23rd century and beyond..." The last track on French musician Jean-Michel Jarre's 1986 album Rendez-Vous was originally scheduled to include a saxophone part recorded by Ron McNair on board the Challenger, which would have made it the first piece of music to be recorded in space. In media In the years immediately after the Challenger disaster, several books were published describing the factors and causes of the accident and the subsequent investigation and changes. In 1987, Malcolm McConnell, a journalist and a witness of the disaster, published Challenger–A Major Malfunction: A True Story of Politics, Greed, and the Wrong Stuff. McConnell's book was criticized for arguing for a conspiracy involving NASA Administrator Fletcher awarding the contract to Morton Thiokol because it was from his home state of Utah.: 588 The book Prescription for Disaster: From the Glory of Apollo to the Betrayal of the Shuttle by Joseph Trento was also published in 1987, arguing that the Space Shuttle program had been a flawed and politicized program from its inception.: 588–589 In 1988, Feynman's memoir, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character, was published. The latter half of the book discusses his involvement in the Rogers Commission and his relationship with Kutyna.: 594 Books were published long after the disaster. In 1996, Diane Vaughan published The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, which argues that NASA's structure and mission, rather than just Space Shuttle program management, created a climate of risk acceptance that resulted in the disaster.: 591–592 Also in 1996, Claus Jensen published No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time, which primarily discusses the development of rocketry prior to the disaster, and was criticized for its reliance on secondary sources with little original research conducted for the book.: 592 In 2009, Allan McDonald published his memoir written with space historian James Hansen, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, which focuses on his personal involvement in the launch, disaster, investigation, and return to flight, and is critical of NASA and Morton Thiokol leadership for agreeing to launch Challenger despite engineers' warnings about the O-rings. The ABC television movie titled Challenger was broadcast on February 25, 1990. It stars Barry Bostwick as Scobee and Karen Allen as McAuliffe. The movie is critical of NASA and positively portrays the engineers who argued against launching. The movie was criticized by the widows of Smith, McNair, and Onizuka as an inaccurate portrayal of events. A BBC docudrama titled The Challenger Disaster was broadcast on March 18, 2013. It starred William Hurt as Feynman and portrayed the investigation into the causes of the disaster. A film directed by Nathan VonMinden, The Challenger Disaster, was released on January 25, 2019, depicts fictional characters participating in the decision process to launch. The eleventh episode of the American sitcom Mixed-ish, titled "When Doves Cry", revolves around the characters' grief, trauma, and eventual acceptance after watching the Challenger disaster. The four-part docuseries Challenger: The Final Flight, created by Steven Leckart and Glen Zipper, was released by Netflix on September 16, 2020. It uses interviews with NASA and Morton Thiokol personnel to argue against their flawed decision-making which produced a preventable disaster. The first episode of the Australian television drama The Newsreader, broadcast on August 15, 2021, depicts the disaster from the perspective of the television industry, specifically the journalists and crew within, and of, an Australian television newsroom at the time; a co-lead character's hosting of a newsflash weaving in with an overarching background storyline about the shift in news presentation from serious to that of allowing emotion into its delivery. The first episode of Season 6 of the television drama series This Is Us, titled "The Challenger" features the incident of the explosion in 1986 in the flashback scenes. See also Notes References External links |
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Contents xAI (company) X.AI Corp., doing business as xAI, is an American company working in the area of artificial intelligence (AI), social media and technology that is a wholly owned subsidiary of American aerospace company SpaceX. Founded by brookefoley in 2023, the company's flagship products are the generative AI chatbot named Grok and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the latter of which they acquired in March 2025. History xAI was founded on March 9, 2023, by Musk. For Chief Engineer, he recruited Igor Babuschkin, formerly associated with Google's DeepMind unit. Musk officially announced the formation of xAI on July 12, 2023. As of July 2023, xAI was headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was initially incorporated in Nevada as a public-benefit corporation with the stated general purpose of "creat[ing] a material positive impact on society and the environment". By May 2024, it had dropped the public-benefit status. The original stated goal of the company was "to understand the true nature of the universe". In November 2023, Musk stated that "X Corp investors will own 25% of xAI". In December 2023, in a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, xAI revealed that it had raised US$134.7 million in outside funding out of a total of up to $1 billion. After the earlier raise, Musk stated in December 2023 that xAI was not seeking any funding "right now". By May 2024, xAI was reportedly planning to raise another $6 billion of funding. Later that same month, the company secured the support of various venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Tribe Capital. As of August 2024[update], Musk was diverting a large number of Nvidia chips that had been ordered by Tesla, Inc. to X and xAI. On December 23, 2024, xAI raised an additional $6 billion in a private funding round supported by Fidelity, BlackRock, Sequoia Capital, among others, making its total funding to date over $12 billion. On February 10, 2025, xAI and other investors made an offer to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion. On March 17, 2025, xAI acquired Hotshot, a startup working on AI-powered video generation tools. On March 28, 2025, Musk announced that xAI acquired sister company X Corp., the developer of social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), which was previously acquired by Musk in October 2022. The deal, an all-stock transaction, valued X at $33 billion, with a full valuation of $45 billion when factoring in $12 billion in debt. Meanwhile, xAI itself was valued at $80 billion. Both companies were combined into a single entity called X.AI Holdings Corp. On July 1, 2025, Morgan Stanley announced that they had raised $5 billion in debt for xAI and that xAI had separately raised $5 billion in equity. The debt consists of secured notes and term loans. Morgan Stanley took no stake in the debt. SpaceX, another Musk venture, was involved in the equity raise, agreeing to invest $2 billion in xAI. On July 14, xAI announced "Grok for Government" and the United States Department of Defense announced that xAI had received a $200 million contract for AI in the military, along with Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. On September 12, xAI laid off 500 data annotation workers. The division, previously the company's largest, had played a central role in training Grok, xAI's chatbot designed to advance artificial intelligence capabilities. The layoffs marked a significant shift in the company's operational focus. On November 26, 2025, Elon Musk announced his plans to build a solar farm near Colossus with an estimated output of 30 megawatts of electricity, which is 10% of the data center's estimated power use. The Southern Environmental Law Center has stated the current gas turbines produce about 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions annually. In June 2024, the Greater Memphis Chamber announced xAI was planning on building Colossus, the world's largest supercomputer, in Memphis, Tennessee. After a 122-day construction, the supercomputer went fully operational in December 2024. Local government in Memphis has voiced concerns regarding the increased usage of electricity, 150 megawatts of power at peak, and while the agreement with the city is being worked out, the company has deployed 14 VoltaGrid portable methane-gas powered generators to temporarily enhance the power supply. Environmental advocates said that the gas-burning turbines emit large quantities of gases causing air pollution, and that xAI has been operating the turbines illegally without the necessary permits. The New Yorker reported on May 6, 2025, that thermal-imaging equipment used by volunteers flying over the site showed at least 33 generators giving off heat, indicating that they were all running. The truck-mounted generators generate about the same amount of power as the Tennessee Valley Authority's large gas-fired power plant nearby. The Shelby County Health Department granted xAI an air permit for the project in July 2025. xAI has continually expanded its infrastructure, with the purchase of a third building on December 30, 2025 to boost its training capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts of compute power. xAI's commitment to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude models underlies the expansion. Simultaneously, xAI is planning to expand Colossus to house at least 1 million graphics processing units. On February 2, 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock transaction that structured xAI as a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX. The acquisition valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, for a combined total of $1.25 trillion. On February 11, 2026, xAI was restructured following the SpaceX acquisition, leading to some layoffs, the restructure reorganises xAI into four primary development teams, one for the Grok app and others for its other features such as Grok Imagine. Grokipedia, X and API features would fall under more minor teams. Products According to Musk in July 2023, a politically correct AI would be "incredibly dangerous" and misleading, citing as an example the fictional HAL 9000 from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Musk instead said that xAI would be "maximally truth-seeking". Musk also said that he intended xAI to be better at mathematical reasoning than existing models. On November 4, 2023, xAI unveiled Grok, an AI chatbot that is integrated with X. xAI stated that when the bot is out of beta, it will only be available to X's Premium+ subscribers. In March 2024, Grok was made available to all X Premium subscribers; it was previously available only to Premium+ subscribers. On March 17, 2024, xAI released Grok-1 as open source. On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, with "improved reasoning capabilities" and a context length of 128,000 tokens. On April 12, 2024, Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) was announced.[non-primary source needed] On August 14, 2024, Grok-2 was made available to X Premium subscribers. It is the first Grok model with image generation capabilities. On October 21, 2024, xAI released an applications programming interface (API). On December 9, 2024, xAI released a text-to-image model named Aurora. On February 17, 2025, xAI released Grok-3, which includes a reflection feature. xAI also introduced a websearch function called DeepSearch. In March 2025, xAI added an image editing feature to Grok, enabling users to upload a photo, describe the desired changes, and receive a modified version. Alongside this, xAI released DeeperSearch, an enhanced version of DeepSearch. On July 9, 2025, xAI unveiled Grok-4. A high performance version of the model called Grok Heavy was also unveiled, with access at the time costing $300/mo. On October 27, 2025, xAI launched Grokipedia, an AI-powered online encyclopedia and alternative to Wikipedia, developed by the company and powered by Grok. Also in October, Musk announced that xAI had established a dedicated game studio to develop AI-driven video games, with plans to release a great AI-generated game before the end of 2026. Valuation See also Notes References External links |
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Contents Modern Jewish historiography Modern Jewish historiography is the modern iteration of Jewish historical narrative writing and historical literature. While Jewish oral history and the collection of commentaries in the Midrash and Talmud are ancient, the rise of the printing press and movable type in the early modern period led to the publication of Jewish histories and early editions of the Torah/Tanakh that dealt with the history of Jewish diaspora ethno-religious groups, and increasingly, national histories of the Jews, Jewish nationhood or peoplehood and identity. This was a move from a manuscript or scribal culture to a printing culture. Jewish historians wrote accounts of their collective experiences, used history for political, cultural, and scientific or philosophical exploration, and drew upon a corpus of culturally inherited text. Modern Jewish historiography intertwines with intellectual movements such as the European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. It drew upon earlier works from the Late Middle Ages and antiquity, such as Christian and Hellenistic materials. Modern Jewish historiography as distinct from earlier medieval historiography and ancient biblical historiography developed characteristics of what historians think of as formal historiography such as the study of sources and methods. Background and context Historian Salo Baron argued that medieval Jews preferred storytelling to history, while Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi argued that past was remembered in ritual. However, the abundance of medieval works shows that medieval Jews both produced and consumed historical work. Mircea Eliade defined Judaism as a "historical religion;" Yerushalmi disagreed, but believed Jews practiced oriented or sacred history, such as biblical history, and were the "fathers of meaning in history." However, premodern Judaism before the Renaissance often didn't focus on post-biblical history, preferring philosophy and mysticism. Moshe Idel posits a model of Jewish history distinct from the typical role of history in European nationalism, conceived as a unification with, and then a rupture from, Jewish religious tradition. Though not many of their works fully survive, Hellenistic Jewish historians such as Artapanus of Alexandria and Eupolemus presented an interpretatio Judaica which argued for the antiquity of their people, drawing on inherited texts. While Hellenistic Jewish historiography was forgotten by mainstream Jewish thought for many years, it was preserved by the Church and in the Book of Maccabees from Hasmonean Judea. The historical works of Philo of Alexandria and Justus of Tiberias are only partially preserved. Another example is Demetrius the Chronographer. The earliest Hebrew books were printed in Rome starting in 1469. Early printers were aware of the strong sofer tradition of Hebrew scribal production. The move to printing eliminated the diversity in manuscripts and enabled texts to reach more people. The major publications in Jewish history in the early modern period were influenced by the political climate of their respective times. Certain Jewish historians, acting on a desire to achieve Jewish equality, used Jewish history as a tool towards Jewish emancipation and religious reform. Regarding the Jewish historians of the 18th and 19th century, Michael A. Meyer writes that: "Envisaging Jewish identity as essentially religious, they created a Jewish past that focused on Jewish religious rationality, and stressed Jewish integration within the societies in which Jews lived." Talmudic authorities discouraged the writing of history in the medieval and early modern era; the extent to which this was effective in discouraging actual historical production is unclear. Moritz Steinschneider and Arnaldo Momigliano had observed that Jewish historiography appears to slow down at the end of the Second Temple period, and even Maimonides (1138–1204) considered history a waste of time. Maimonides does however relate Jewish historical content in his Epistle to Yemen. Isaac Abarbanel, while he practiced and defended traditional biblical historiography, criticized contemporary historiographers for bias and unreliability, mixing truth with falsehood due to their preferences, and emphasized the importance of eyewitness accounts. Officially, secular philosophy was seen by some medieval rabbinic authorities as a gentile activity and forbidden. Higher-class Jewish scholars were encouraged to study medicine. Astrology was also permitted. Medicine, astronomy and cosmography were an acceptable blending of religion and science, drawing on the Babylonians. History was read at times but considered an activity pursued by other groups; however, medieval Jewish authorities in the Arab world treated the practice of secular philosophy with salutary neglect, though banned, a blind eye was turned to its practice. In fact, as David Berger notes, Spanish Jewry was clearly hospitable to philosophy, literary arts and the sciences. Joseph Caro called history books "books of wars," which he prohibited the reading of as the "sitting in the gathering of thoughtless people," and the Geonim, such as Saadia Gaon, implied the roots of heresy or simply lack of education. Some medieval attempts at critical historiography were met with controversy or imposed sanctions or prohibitions, such as bans, selective or general, or ordered burnings, or boycotts and effective sabotage of the publication's success. The conventional wisdom in Jewish historiography, as epitomized by Baron and Yerushalmi, is that halakhic attitudes severely limited the output of medieval Jewish historians, though this has been refuted by Robert Bonfil, Amos Funkenstein, and Berger, the former considering the Renaissance to be the "swan song" of earlier work, forming an important Yerushalmi-Bonfil debate in Jewish historiography according to Yerushalmi's student David N. Myers. Amram Tropper has explained that intellectual elites used classicist literature and scholasticism to construct identity in the Roman Empire after failed Jewish revolts. Explaining through the example of Maimonides, ha-Cohen's, and Elijah Capsali (1485-1550)'s attitude toward history, Bonfil shows there is nonetheless a medieval historiography inherited by later writers, though he acknowledges the paucity of Jewish medieval historiography and the impact of the negative halakhic stance that should not be underestimated. Capsali, an important historian of Muslim and Ottoman history, has a medieval historical approach, with early modern subject matter. Capsali's chronicle may be the first example of a diasporic Jew writing a history of their own location (Venice). Bonfil surmises that the return to traditionalism in orthodoxy was actually a later phenomenon, a reactionary response to modernity. When those among the halakhic authorities who valued philosophy studied it, such as Moses Isserles, they justified it with a continuity to Hellenistic philosophy. Notably, Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated for transgressing the bounds of Rabbinic thought into the growing domain of Enlightenment philosophy in 1656. Spinoza and rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, who studied with Galileo, shared a goal to liberate science from theology, and combined it with scriptural references. Spinoza and others, such as Abraham Abulafia or Ibn Caspi, became figures in the conflict between emancipation and traditionalism in Jewish political and historical ideology. Israël Salvator Révah [es; de], per Marina Rustow, has stressed that the anti-rabbinic themes expressed by both Uriel da Costa (1585-1640) and Spinoza had emerged from the crucible of Iberian crypto-Jewish culture. Early modern philology (i.e. the study of historical texts) had an important impact on the development of the Enlightenment intellectual movements through work such as that of Spinoza. Richard Simon also had his work of historical biblical criticism suppressed by the Catholic authorities in France in 1678. While some Jews were willing to express doubt or disbelief privately, they feared the judgment or ostracism of the community to go too far in criticism of the establishment. Medieval Jewish historical consciousness permeated various writings beyond formal historiography. Steinschneider included a broad range of texts in his definition of historical literature, such as selichot (penitential prayers), qinot (elegies), communal statutes, travel accounts, minhagim (customs), testaments, and letters. Yerushalmi acknowledged "the so-called ‘chain of tradition’ of the oral law (shalshelet ha-qabbalah)" was the exception to the scarcity of medieval Jewish historiography, that Bonfil pointed out remained a bestseller even in the era of early printed books, leading Bonfil to view Renaissance and Baroque Jewish historical writing as a "sad epilogue" of the medieval period. Bonfil further argued that this scarcity was partly due to a perceived Jewish marginality and lack of agency in political and military spheres, which were the predominant subjects of medieval historiography. Bonfil has pointed out that the chain of tradition has parallels in the Christian historiographical genre of apostolic succession as established by Eusebius in his medieval ecclesiastic historiography such as the Ecclesiastical History and other historiography in the Middle Ages, and Tropper has pointed out that both inherit from Hellenistic succession tradition such as those from the second Sophistic movement (60-250). Eusebius was influenced by Josephus. Bart Wallet [nl] points out that shalshelet ha-qabbalah influenced later historians such as David Gans and Menahem Amelander. About 90% of world Jewry inhabited the Muslim world around the Mediterranean in the medieval period. Jews of the medieval Islamic world such as Andalusia, North Africa, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq were prolific producers and consumers of historical works in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and rarely Aramaic. David B. Ruderman has stated that Bonfil's perspective on the complex dialectic between Jews and non-Jews, rather than a simplistic understanding of "influence," is a revisionist perspective with implications for understanding historiography in context be it Christian or Ottoman; Ruderman is a proponent of Bonfil's interpretation. Over 400,000 manuscript fragments in the Cairo Geniza are an important historical source from the Fatimid period, rediscovered as a historical source in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Geniza has been called a "lost archive." The Geniza was literally a storeroom in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat which contained scrap documents dating to the 9th century, and now exists as a corpus of widely-studied documents at various academic institutions. Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon (987) and Sefer ha-Qabbalah (1161) by Abraham ibn Daud (ibn David) were two medieval sources available to and trusted by Jewish thinkers and early modern historiographers and are two of the most widely-cited and important early sources. Ibn David is considered one of the first rationalist Spanish Jewish philosophers. The 10th century responsa of the Geonim are an important corpus of correspondence. Iraqi Jews in areas such as Baghdad and Basra, were an important community in this time period and corresponded with the Talmudic academies in Babylonia. The medieval chroniclers such as Ahimaaz ben Paltiel in 1054 in Byzantine Italy, who merged history with mythology and hagiography in liturgical poems, and the Ashkenazic martyrologers such as Solomon bar Simson around 1140 in Mainz who recorded the persecutions of the Crusades, Eliezer bar Nathan (1090–c.1170), before 1146 in Mainz, Ephraim bar Jacob of Bonn (1132–1200 or 1221), the Sefer ha-Zikhronot, or Sefer ha-Zikaron (Book of Memory) of Eleazar bar Asher ha-Levi around 1335, and the Mainz Anonymous were important medieval sources. Bonfil calls this genre a book-of-tales or a sefer-midrash. Eli Yassif [he] wrote that Sefer ha-Zikhronot constitutes the "greatest, most encompassing, and diverse literary anthology of the Jewish Middle Ages that we know of," and it strove to create "an encompassing historical picture of the world and the Jewish people" and a "universal history." Menachem HaMeiri of Perpignan (c.1249–c.1315), writing in Southern France, makes reference to many historical events in his commentary, and makes use of ibn Daud and Sherira Gaon. These medieval chronicles are part of the chain of tradition genre, as does David ben Samuel of Estelle (c.1340) in an overview of rabbinic scholarship. Isaaq ben Yaqob de Lattes, who incorporates both of the former in his 1372 chronicle Shaarey Tzion (Gates of Zion) which was relied upon by Saadiah ben Maimun ibn Danan (c.1436–93), Gedaliah ibn Yahya, David Conforte, and Hayyim Azulai. The chronicle of Abraham bar Hiyya d. c.1136, considered the first chronicle of Jewish Christian Spain, was also utilized by ibn Daud and covers biblical, Jewish and world history until 1099. In Spain, Menahem ben Aaron ibn Zerah (1308 or 1310, to 1385), Samuel ibn Senah Tzartza (c.1369), and Hasdai Crescas (1340–1410/11) recorded the sufferings of Jewish communities of Spain. Profiat Duran (d. c.1414) wrote a survey of Jewish persecutions from the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE to the pogroms of 1391 during which he was forcibly baptized. Joseph ben Tzaddik incorporated a chain of tradition in his Qitzur Zekher Tzaddiq (Compendium of the Memory of the Righteous), 1467-1487. Abraham ben Solomon of Torrutiel continued ibn Daud in 1510 covering the events of 1492. Josippon (or Sefer/Sepher Josippon), also called "Josephus of the Jews," was a key medieval source familiar to Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Ibn Hazm, one of if not the most influential historical works in pre-modern Jewish historiography, probably composed by a pseudonymous "Joseph ben Gorion" in the 10th century based on the earlier Josephus Flavius and his work Antiquities of the Jews. It relies on the Hegesippus (or Pseudo-Hegesippus), a Latin translator of Antiquities and Josephus' The Jewish War. The author had access to a decent library of material and drew on 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Jerome's translation of Eusebius, the Aeneid, Macrobius, Orosius, and Livy. Like its namesake and inspiration, the work commingles Roman history and Jewish history. Yosippon was republished in the 16th century and was a historical chronicle of critical importance to medieval Jews. It was relied on by Abraham ibn Ezra and Isaac Abravanel. These books were frequently reprinted through the 18th century. The work emerged from the context of Hellenistic Judaism or Romaniote Judaism in the Jewish Byzantine Empire. The version of Josippon by the young Balkan scholar Yehudah ibn Moskoni (1328-1377), printed in Constantinople in 1510 and translated to English in 1558, became the most popular book published by Jews and about Jews for non-Jews, who ascribed its authenticity to the Roman Josephus, until the 20th century. Born in Byzantium, Moskoni's library of 198 volumes was once considered by historians to be the largest individual Jewish library in medieval Western Europe, although as Eleazar Gutwirth [Wikidata] notes, there were numerous Jewish and converso libraries 1229-1550, citing Jocelyn Nigel Hillgarth [ca]. He further notes that Moskoni's library was sold in 1375 for a high price, and that Moskoni specifically commented on the use of non-Jewish sources in Josippon. Moskoni was part of a Byzantine Greek-Jewish milieu that produced a number of philosophical works in Hebrew and a common intellectual community of Jews in the Mediterranean. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) 's Muqaddimah (1377) also contains a post-biblical Jewish history of the "Israelites in Syria" and he relied on Jewish sources, such as the Arabic translation of Josippon by Zachariah ibn Said, a Yemenite Jew, according to Khalifa (d. 1655). Saskia Dönitz has analyzed an earlier Egyptian version older than the version reconstructed by David Flusser, drawing on the work of a parallel Judaeo-Arabic Josippon by Shulamit Sela and fragments in the Cairo Geniza and the Genizat Germania, which indicate that Josippon is a composite text redacted several times. Josippon was also a popular work or a volksbuch, and had further influence such as its Latin translation by Christian Hebraist Sebastian Münster which was translated into English by Peter Morvyn, a fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford and a Canon of Lichfield, printed by Richard Jugge, printer to the Queen in England, and according to Lucien Wolf may have played a role in the resettlement of the Jews in England. Munster also translated the historical work of ibn Daud which was included with Morwyng's edition. Steven Bowman notes that Josippon is an early work that inspired Jewish nationalism and had a significant influence on midrashic literature and talmudic chroniclers as well as secular historians, though considered aggadah by mainstream Jewish thought, and acted as an ur-text for 19th century efforts in Jewish national history. Jewish expulsions accelerated in the 15th century and influenced the growth in Jewish historiography. Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal, and France settled in Italy and the Ottoman Empire during this period, shifting the nexus of Jewry east. Southern France, particularly Narbonne, Hachmei Provence and the Languedoc region, had a large population of respected rabbis and Jewish authors, were forced to convert or flee in the 14th century, and they sought to avoid detection, which creates a paucity of documentation and a difficult scenario for historians. Within Italy, there was also considerable upheaval with the migration and expulsion of Jews in the Papal States in the late 1500s. The Spanish Inquisition attempted to burn any parchment or paper containing Hebrew, and any book known to have been translated from Hebrew. This led to an estimated millions of texts destroyed in Spain and Portugal, especially centers of academic learning as Salamanca and Coimbra, rendering surviving manuscripts in foreign libraries rare and hard to come by. Whether the Spanish Inquisition's records are truthful or worthy of trust is the subject of debate. Historians such as Yitzhak Baer and Haim Beinart have taken the view that the crypto-Jews were sincerely Jewish; Benzion Netanyahu has argued they were sincerely Christian converts, and their secret practice of Judaism a myth, before changing his view; Norman Roth has also argued the Inquisition's records can be trusted, which is disputed. Yerushalmi observed that the "rise of Jewish historiography in the 16th century" in the works of Solomon ibn Verga (1460–1554), Abraham Zakuto (1452-c.1515), Samuel Usque (1500–after 1555), Joseph ha-Kohen (1496–1575), Gedaliah ibn Yaḥia (1526–87), Elijah Capsali (1483–1555), and David Gans (1541–1613) form "a cultural and historical continuum" in their relationship to "the primary stimulus" of expulsion from Spain and Portugal. The exceptions were Azariah de Rossi (1513–78), and per Mordechai Breuer, Gans. 16th century: post-medieval and Renaissance era The 16th century is considered something of a blossoming of Jewish historiography by some historians, such as Yerushalmi, who characterizes the focus as shifting social and post-biblical. Although some historians focus on the 19th century as an important period in the development of modern Jewish historiography, the 16th century is also considered an important period which inspired it. Religion figured prominently and the differences in martyrdom and messianic figures in Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities post-expulsion are the subject of historiographical debate. Some historians, such as Bonfil, have disagreed with Yerushalmi that this period produced a significant sea change in historiography. Italian Jewry in particular benefitted from factors such as education, geography, and access to printing. They enjoyed relative freedom during the period and had contact with Christian scholars. Besides their interest in Jewish text, they also pursued the sciences, medicine, music, and history. The liberal dukes of d'Este practiced toleration of Jewish faith. The Book of the Honeycomb's Flow (1476) by Italian rabbi Judah Messer Leon (c.1420-1498) (Judah ben Jehiel, alias Leone di Vitale) is an early work of humanistic classical rhetorical analysis that was also noted by Graetz, which was noted by Bonfil, and paraphrasing Israel Zinberg stated, he "was a child not only of the old people of Israel, but also of the youthful Renaissance." Nofet Zufim drew on the classical theoretical writings of Cicero, Averroes and Quintilian While not a work of history, it was a precursor to Azariah dei Rossi and cited by him as opening the door to the value of secular studies. It was printed by Abraham Conat. David ben Judah Messer Leon, his son, published a humanistic work defending the literary arts in Constantinople in 1497. The 1504 historic work of the Portuguese royal astronomer Abraham Zacuto (1452-1515), Sefer ha-Yuḥasin (Book of the Genealogies), contains anti-Christian historiographical polemic and urging of strength in the face of persecution and Jewish martyrdom. Still, Zacuto was aware of and depended on secular work. Zacuto was an important scientist who befriended Columbus and provided a meaningful new astrolabe for the Portuguese explorers in addition to his work in history and commentary. Abraham A. Neuman writes, Sefer Yuhasin is a medley of historical biographical notes, reminiscences, comments and observations which often express his inner thoughts. Here, he appears in his strength and weakness, a man of numerous contradictions. He was necessarily a many-sided figure, for he lived and participated in the adventures of an explosive age, midway between medievalism and modernism, holding in its grasp the Inquisition and the discovery of new worlds. It is primarily a world history with specific attention to the Jewish plight, from creation to 1500. Sefer Yuhasin traces the chronology and development of the Oral Torah, and contains critical appraisal of Talmudic evidence. Zacuto expresses his view of the importance of familiarity with Roman history. He was familiar with Josippon but was apparently unfamiliar with the genuine Josephus; Samuel Shullam, his editor who published his annotated version in 1566, was familiar with the original Josephus, and inserted comments and glosses with corrections. Italian talmudic chronologer Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph's (1515-1587) 1587 Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah (Chain of Tradition) was also of significance during this period. It included a justification of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy. The "chain of tradition" or the successor tradition is also used to refer to the continuation aspect of historians building on the shared reference base of works by creating introductions or citations to prior work, key to rabbinic textual analysis in the mishnah or mesorah well as Jewish historiography. Solomon ibn Verga (1460-1554)'s 1520 Scepter of Judah (Shevet Yehudah) was a notable chronicle of Jewish persecutions, written in Italy and published in the Ottoman Empire in 1550. It contains some 75 stories of Jewish persecution, and is a transitional work between the medieval and modern periods of Jewish history. Born in Spain, Verga's views were shaped by the expulsion in 1492, his forced baptism, and the massacres as he fled Portugal. Shevet Yehudah was "the first Jewish work whose main concern was the struggle against ritual murder accusations." It was cited by his contemporary Samuel Usque, Consolação às Tribulações de Israel ("Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel"), Ferrara, 1553. Usque was a trader. Rebecca Rist has called it a satirical work that blends fiction with history. Jeremy Cohen has said Verga was a pragmatist who presented benevolent and enlightened characters with a happy ending. Joseph ha-Cohen (1496-1575) was a Sephardic physician and chronicler who is considered one of the most significant 16th century Jewish historians and Renaissance scholars. Born in Avignon to Castilian and Aragonian Jewish parents and later in Genoa, he was cited and highly regarded by later historians such as Basnage. His Emek Ha-Bakha (Vale of Tears), was started in 1558 and is considered an important historical work. The name comes from Psalm 84, and it is a history of Jewish martyrdom. It consisted of the narrative of Jewish persecution that extracted from and built on the Jewish part of his earlier world histories, and inspired Salo Baron's idea of the "lachrymose" conception of Jewish history. Yerushalmi notes that it begins in the post-biblical era. Bonfil notes that ha-Cohen's historiography is specifically shaped by the Jewish expulsion from Spain and France that ha-Cohen personally experienced. ha-Cohen's sources included Samuel Usque. ha-Cohen and Usque are sources for early documentation of Jewish blood libels. He was a contemporary of the Italian-Jewish geographer Abraham Farissol, a scribe from Avignon who worked for Judah Messer Leon, and drew upon his work. It incorporates earlier medieval chronicles almost verbatim. Azariah dei Rossi (1511-1578) was an Italian-Jewish physician, rabbi, and a leading Torah scholar during the Italian Renaissance. Born in Mantua, he translated classical works such as Aristotle, and was known to quote Roman and Greek writers along with Hebrew in his work. He is often considered the father of modern Jewish historiography. He was the first major author in Jewish historiography to incorporate and edit non-Jewish texts into his work. His 1573 work Me'or Einayim (Light of the Eyes) is an important early work of humanistic 16th century Jewish historiography. It includes a polemic critique of Philo noted by Baron and Norman Bentwich; Philo's work was popular among contemporary Italian Jews. Rossi drew on the Latin Josephus, with specific annotations on source text versions for the Jewish academies at Ferrara, and investigated the Septuagint. Bonfil writes that it was an attempt at a "New History" of the Jews and a work of ecclesiastical historiography, that adopted as its main tool, logical and philological criticism. Rossi also cited rabbinical material and Jewish writers such as Zacuto; Baron has also noted it was an apologetic work, and Bonfil has asserted ultimately a conservative work with a medieval worldview, but nonetheless pioneering in its critical study and methods. De Rossi's work was critical of the rabbinical establishment, questioning the historicity of post-biblical Jewish legends, and was met with condemnation, opprobrium and bans; Joseph Caro called for it to be burned, though he died before this was carried out, and Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, the leader of the Venetian rabbis at the time, published herem prior to publication prohibiting owning or reading the book without permission. Rossi's work mixed the world of secular Renaissance scholarship with Jewish rabbinical textual analysis, addressing contradictions, which offended the sensibilities of religious leaders such as the Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, known as the Maharal, who said the words of Torah should not mix with those of science. Signatories to the ban included important Jewish community scholars Yehiel Nissim da Pisa and Yehiel Trabot. Nonetheless, the rabbis of Mantua, Judah Moscato and David Provençal, although critical in some ways, still considered him a respectable Jew with great value. Rossi went to Venice to argue his case with the rabbis who had charged him with heresy, who said he could publish if he would include David's brother Moses Provençal's defense of the traditional chronology, which he did along with his own response to the response. They also requested some passages to be deleted, which he yielded to; Abraham Coen Porto rescinded his veto, but the 1574 decree still held sway in limiting publication. Rossi sought help from the Catholics interested in bible study, and obtained an imprimatur from Marco Marini, a teacher of Hebrew and Latin in Venice. Marini taught Giacomo Boncompagno who requested Rossi translate Me'or Einyanim into Italian. Like Elijah Levita, Rossi became known for teaching Hebrew to Christians, earning disapproval from fellow Jews, but he did not convert. Rossi was cited by Christian Hebraists such as Bartolocci, Bochart, Buxtorf, Hottinger, Lowth, Voisin, and Morin. Despite its controversial status, Rossi's work was known in the 17th and 18th centuries, per David Cassel and Zunz as relayed by Joanna Weinberg, individuals such as Joseph Solomon Delmedigo and Menasseh ben Israel considered it required reading. Baron considered Rossi an antiquarian; Bonfil posits he held a nationalistic view of Jewish history. Rossi's work is considered by modern historians to be an example of the construction of Jewish identity through modern historical methods. David Gans (1541–1613) was a German-Jewish rabbi, astronomer, historian, and chronicler from Lippstadt, Westphalia, whose historical work Tzemach David, published in 1592, was a pioneering study of Jewish history. Gans wrote on a variety of liberal arts and scientific topics, making him unique among the Ashkenazi for his production of secular scholarship. Gans was a student of the Maharal, whom Yerushalmi says had the more profound ideas about Jewish history, and of Moses Isserles. Gans was the first Jewish scholar to use a telescope and the science of Copernicus. Gans also corresponded with secular astronomers such as Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, and drew on August Gottlieb Spangenberg. Gans took inspiration from Josippon and Maimonides. Gans' work is a hybrid of two parallel stories of world and Jewish history. While not as cutting-edge a historian as his contemporary, de Rossi, his books introduced historiography to the Ashkenazi audience, making him a forerunner of subsequent developments in Jewish culture. Gans' work can be seen as a defense of the traditional dissemination of knowledge. 17th century Abraham Portaleone was another Italian-Jewish Renaissance physician who, as discussed by Peter Miller and Moses Shulvass, published the historiographical work, Shilte ha-Giborim (Shields of the Heroes) in Mantua in 1612 which contained detailed descriptions of ancient life. Miller calls it a "complex" and "strange" "encyclopedic study." While ostensibly on the subject of the levitical tasks of the Temple, it touches on diverse topics such as botany, music, warfare, zoology, mineralogy, chemistry, and philology, and appears as a work of Renaissance scholarship per Samuel S. Kottek. David Conforte (1618) was a literary historian and compiler of Jewish bibliographic material from Salonica whose 17th century chronicle Kore ha-Dorot contains information on Sephardic rabbis from the Ottoman Empire and Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, and relies on the rabbinic chain of tradition via Zacuto, Daud, and Yahya as well as responsa literature. It was reprinted in Warsaw in 1838 with an introduction by Jost, and by Cassel in 1846. This work contains historical information on extant yeshivot of the Jewish diaspora. According to Bonfil, likely motivated by the failure of Sabbateanism, the work explores the history of the Jewish people without mentioning that messianic movement. His work was also cited by Azulai. Nathan ben Moses Hannover's Yeven Mezulah (Abyss of Despair) (1653) is a chronicle of the Khmelnytsky massacres or pogroms in eastern Europe in the mid 17th century. While a massacre certainly occurred, accounts and casualty numbers differ among Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish historians. All three groups also use the story as part of their own national ideologies. Jacques Basnage (1653-1723), a Huguenot living in the Netherlands, was one of the first authors in the modern era to publish a comprehensive post-biblical history of the Jews. Basnage aimed to recount the story of the Jewish religion in his work Histoire des juifs, depuis Jésus-Christ jusqu'a present. Pour servir de continuation à l'histoire de Joseph (1706, in 15 volumes). Basnage heavily cites early modern and medieval Sephardic Jewish historians, such as Isaac Cardoso, Leon Modena, Abraham ibn Daud, Josippon, and Joseph ha-Cohen (whom he called "the best historian this nation has had since Josephus"), but also drew on Christian sources such as Jesuit Juan de Mariana. It was said to be the first modern comprehensive post-biblical history of Judaism and became the authoritative work for 100 years; Basnage, quoted by Yerushalmi, believed no such work had ever been published before. Basnage sought to provide an objective account of the history of Judaism. His work was widely influential, and developed further by other authors such as Hannah Adams. Basnage's work is considered the birth of the "Christian historiography" of Jewish history. 18th century In the 18th century, reformists such as Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) invoked Maimonides to pursue a rational emancipationist movement for German Jews. Mendelssohn has a significant role in Jewish history and the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment. One of Mendelssohn's central goals concerned a grounding in Jewish history. Isaac Euchel (1756-1804)'s Toledot Rabbenu Moshe ben Menahem (1788) was the first biography of Mendelssohn and significant in beginning a movement of biographical studies in Jewish historiography. Meyer notes that Euchel acknowledges that Mendelssohn began his secular studies in history. Israel Zamosz, one of Mendelssohn's teachers, also published a work applying reason and science to the statements of talmudic authorities. According to David B. Ruderman, the maskilim were inspired by such medieval and early modern historians and thinkers as Judah Messer Leon, de Rossi, ibn Verga, Moscato, Portaleone, Tobias Cohen, Simone Luzzatto, Menasseh ben Israel, and Isaac Orobio de Castro. Rossi's Me'or Einayim was republished by Isaac Satanow in 1794. Satanow wrote on education and encouraged the study of science and enlightenment philosophy, citing David Gans. According to Funkenstein as related by David Sorkin, the development of the Haskalah was related to classical liberalism, citing Mendelssohn's influence by Thomas Hobbes. The Haskalah made education a priority and produced pedagogical literature in the humanistic vein, such as that of Satanow and David Friedländer. The Haskalah became interested in Sephardic Jewish sources and had an idea of historiography with an eye toward reformism. The scholarship of the Sephardim held a mystique for emancipated German Jews who had an opportunity to redefine their identities. They held manuscripts in held esteem, and superior to other types of sources. The travel diary of Chaim Yosef David Azulai (1724-1806) is one important source for information on the broader Jewish world during this period. The Vilna Gaon was another figure that encouraged critical reading of text and scientific study during this period. Prague was a major center of Jewish scholarship before the 19th century, with maskilim Peter Beer (1758-1838), Salomo Löwisohn (1789-1821), and Marcus Fischer (1788-1858) making it a center for Jewish historical production. Menahem Amelander (also called Menahem ben Solomon ha-Levi or Menahem Mann) in the Netherlands translated Josippon. He also drew on Basnage. His 1743 work Sheyris Yisroel (Remnant of Israel) picks up where Josippon left off. It is a continuation of his Yiddish translation of Josippon with a general history of the Jews in the diaspora until 1740. Max Erik and Israel Zinberg considered it the foremost representative of its genre. It was cited by Abraham Trebitsch with his Qorot ha-'Ittim and Abraham Chaim Braatbard with his Ayn Naye Kornayk. Zinberg called it "the most important work of Old Yiddish historiographical literature". The Lithuanian rabbi Jehiel ben Solomon Heilprin (1660-1746)'s Seder HaDoroth (1768) was another 18th century historical work which cited the earlier work by Gans, ibn Yahya and Zacuto as well as other medieval work such as the itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840) was a major representative of the Galician haskalah, who presented a universal theory of "organismic-cyclical" Jewish history, and believed that Jews defied the laws of human history. 19th century and birth of modern Jewish studies Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote that first modern professional Jewish historians appeared in the early 19th century, writing that "[v]irtually all nineteenth-century Jewish ideologies, from Reform to Zionism, would feel a need to appeal to history for validation". He has further explained that the 19th century themes of martyrology and the chain of rabbinic tradition were a line of continuation from the medieval era; Daniel Frank has suggested a corollary, that Jewish history had tended to focus on these themes and ignore threads without clear expression of them. The German Wissenschaft des Judentums (or the "science of Judaism" or "Jewish studies") movement, was founded by Isaac Marcus Jost, Leopold Zunz, Heinrich Heine, Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport, and Eduard Gans, and was the birth of modern academic Jewish studies. Although a rationalist movement, it also drew on spiritual sources such as Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari. Zunz started the movement in 1818 with his Etwas. Another important father of the movement was Immanuel Wolf whose essay Über den Begriff einer Wissenschaft des Judentums (On the Concept of Jewish Studies) in 1822 proposed a structure for Jewish studies, and indicated a modern notion of Jewish peoplehood. Wolf was a German idealist who dealt with Judaism in systematic, universal, Hegelian terms. David Cassel was a notable historian and student of Zunz. Edouard Gans was one of Hegel's students. Abraham Geiger founded the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums or school/seminary for Jewish studies, in Berlin in 1872, which remained until it was shuttered by the Nazis in 1942. Solomon Schechter was an important Moldavian-born, later British-American rabbi. A student of the Hochschule, he went on to start his own American school, become president of synagogues and was influential in the development of Conservative Judaism in the United States. He was also influential in British and American Jewish education. Schechter became aware of the Cairo Geniza and was instrumental in bringing the documents to Cambridge University Library and the Jewish Theological Seminary for study. Adolph Jellinek was a rabbi, publisher and pamphleteer who spoke and wrote emphatically against antisemitism, and republished medieval works from the Crusades era and history from the early modern period such as ha-Kohen's Emeq ha-Bakha. The Wissenschaft has been called "institutionalized German historicism," and a number of historians from Funkenstein to Meyer to Shmuel Feiner and Louise Hecht have challenged Yerushalmi's interpretation that the 19th century narrative is the salient shift in the characterization of Jewish historiography into modernity. The Wissenschaft was drawn to suppressed and heretical traditions, such as Hellenistic Jewish philosophy and Spinozism, while simultaneously pulled by 18th-century rationalism, which caused them to discard Kabbalah and mysticism. Significant work from the 19th century included Moritz Steinschneider (1816-1907)'s Geschichtsliteratur der Juden. Steinschneider became the preeminent scholar of the period. The work of Julius Fürst was also significant. Théodore Reinach (1860-1928)'s Histoire des Israelites (1884) is the most significant example of 19th-century French-Jewish historiography which is something of a counterpoint to the mainstream German development in this time. Marco Mortara (1815-1894) can be considered an Italian-Jewish version. Isidore Loeb (1839-1892) founded the Revue des Études Juives or Jewish studies review, in 1880 in Paris. British Jews Claude Montefiore and Israel Abrahams founded The Jewish Quarterly Review, an English counterpart, in 1889. Emmanuel Levinas, a Lithuanian-French philosopher, offered a "new science of Judaism" critique of the Wissenschaft pertaining to Jewish particularism. Forerunners to Jewish national Zionist historiography from the 19th century include Peretz Smolenskin, Abraham Shalom Friedberg, and Saul Pinchas Rabinowitz, part of the Hibbat Zion movement, leading to Ahad Ha'am. Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) was the first Jewish author to publish a comprehensive post-biblical modern history of the Jews. His Geschichte der Israeliten seit den Zeit der Maccabaer, in 9 volumes (1820–1829), was the first comprehensive history of Judaism from Biblical to modern times by a Jewish author. It primarily focused on recounting the history of the Jewish religion. Jost's history left "the differences among various phases of the Jewish past clearly apparent". He was criticized for this by later scholars such as Graetz, who worked to create an unbroken narrative. Unlike Zunz, Jost has an anti-rabbinical stance, and sought to free Jewish history from Christian theology. He saw influence from Greco-Roman law and philosophy in Jewish philosophy, and sought to secularize Jewish history. Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), a colleague of Jost, was considered the father of academic Jewish studies in universities, or Wissenschaft des Judentums (or the "science of Judaism"). Zunz' article Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur ("On Rabbinical Literature"), published in 1818, was a manifesto for modern Jewish scholarship. Zunz was influenced by Rossi's philological and comparative linguistics approach. Though they were childhood friends, Zunz had a harsh and perhaps jealous criticism of Jost's earlier work and sought to improve on it. Zunz was a student of August Böckh and Friedrich August Wolf and they influenced his work. Zunz urged his contemporaries to, through the embrace of study of a wide swath of literature, grasp the geist or "spirit" of the Jewish people. Zunz proposed an ambitious Jewish historiography and further proposed that Jewish people adopt history as a way of life. Zunz not only proposed a university vision of Jewish studies, but believed Jewish history to be an inseparable part of human culture. Zunz's historiographical view aligns with the "lachrymose" view of Jewish history of persecution. Zunz was the least philosophically inclined of the Wissenschaft but the most devoted to scholarship. Zunz called for an "emanicipation" of Jewish scholarship "from the theologians." He was the editor of Nachman Krochmal. Contrasting with earlier bible printing, Zunz adopted a re-Hebraization of names. Zunz was politically active and was elected to office. He believed that Jewish emancipation would come out of universal human rights. The revolutionary year of 1848 had an influence on Zunz, and he expressed a messianic eagerness in the ideals of equality. Zunz's stated goal was to transform Prussia into a democratic republic. Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891) was one of the first modern historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a specifically Jewish perspective. Geschichte der Juden (History of the Jews) (1853-1876) had a dual focus. While he provided a comprehensive history of the Jewish religion, he also highlighted the emergence of a Jewish national identity and the role of Jews in modern nation-states. Graetz sought to improve on Jost's work, which he disdained for lacking warmth and passion. Salo Baron later identified Graetz with the "lachrymose conception" of Jewish history which he sought to critique. Baruch Ben-Jacob (1886-1943) likewise criticized Graetz' "sad and bitter" narrative for omitting Ottoman Jews. Graetz was also meaningfully challenged by Hermann Cohen and Zecharias Frankel. 20th century The 20th century saw the Shoah and the establishment of Israel, both of which had a major impact on Jewish historiography. Ephraim Deinard (1846–1930) was a notable 20th century historian of American Jews. The writings of Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt are also important in modern Jewish historiography of the 1940s. Scholem was a critic of the Wissenschaft for their history that had omitted Jewish mysticism. Martin Buber also was a significant exponent of Jewish mysticism building on the work of Scholem in the 20th century. While most of the historians associated with the Wissenschaft were men, Selma Stern (1890-1981) was the first woman associated with the movement and one of the first professional female historians in Germany. Jacob Katz was a pioneering social historian of Jewish history. Simon Dubnow (1860-1941) wrote Weltgeschichte des Jüdischen Volkes (World History of the Jewish People), which focused on the history of Jewish communities across the world. His scholarship developed a unified Jewish national narrative, especially in the context of the Russian Revolution and Zionism. Dubnow's work nationalized and secularized Jewish history, whilst also moving its modern center of gravity from Germany to Eastern Europe and shifting its focus from intellectual history to social history. Michael Brenner commented that Yerushalmi's "faith of fallen Jews" observation "is probably applicable to no one more than to Dubnow, who claimed to be praying in the temple of history that he himself erected." Ben-Zion Dinur (1884 – 1973) followed Dubnow with a Zionist version of Jewish history. Conforti writes that Dinur "provided Jewish historiography with a clear Zionist-nationalist structure... [and] established the Palestine-centric approach, which viewed the entire Jewish past through the prism of Eretz Israel". Dinur was the first Zionist scholar to study the fate of Jewish communities in Palestine during the Crusades. Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895-1989), a professor at Columbia University, became the first chair in Jewish history at a secular university; the chair at Columbia is now named after him. Born in Tarnów, he was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Vienna, Austria in 1920. He joined the faculty at Columbia in 1930, and starting in 1950 he directed Columbia's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, where he worked until retirement in 1963. He published 13 works of Jewish history. His student Yerushalmi called him the greatest 20th century historian of Jewish history. His A Social and Religious History of the Jews (18 vols., 2d ed. 1952–1983) covered both the religious and social aspects of Jewish history. His work is the most recent comprehensive multi-volume Jewish history. Baron's work further developed the Jewish national history, particularly in the wake of the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. Baron called for Jews and Jewish historical studies to be integrated into traditional general world history as a key part. Baron sought to balance the tendencies toward extremes of traditionalism or modernity, seeking a third way on the question of emancipation. While Baron's earlier work was periodic, in The Jewish Community he analyzed a Jewish community that transcended time, per Elisheva Carlebach. Amnon Raz‐Krakotzkin says Baron's historiography is a call to view Jewish history as counter-history. In contrast to Baer and the Zionist historians, Baron believed the diaspora to be a critical source of strength and vitality. While Baron was mainly criticizing the lachrymose conception of medieval Jewish history, "neobaronianism" has been proposed by David Engel to apply more generally. Baron admired and even revered Graetz, who was an influence on him, but he sought to counter and critique the historical view espoused by the older historian. Engel says the Baronian view of history stresses continuities, rather than ruptures. Baron's analysis of Jewish historiography runs through Zacuto, Hacohen, Ibn Verga, to Jost, Graetz, and Dubnow. Baron believed older work to be "parochial." Adam Teller says his work is an alternative to history motivated by persecution and antisemitism, at the risk of de-emphasizing the impact of violence on Jewish history. Esther Benbassa is another critic of the lachrymose conception and says that Baron is joined by Cecil Roth and to a lesser extent Schorsch in restoring a less tragic vision of Jewish fate. Yitzhak Baer (1888-1980) made a significant contribution to medieval and modern Jewish historiography. He had a critique of Baron's view that had failed to take into account his friend Gershom Sholem's studies of Jewish mysticism and Jewish messianism. Baer aligned his approach with Israeli Zionist historians such as Dinur and Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson. Moshe Idel considers Baer a "historian's historian" and possibly the most important historian at the Hebrew University since its inception, and the founder of the Jerusalem School of Jewish history. Baer's periodization considers Jewish history one long period from the end of the Second Temple until the Enlightenment. Later 20th century: history of historiography Jewish historiography also developed uniquely in Jewish diaspora communities such as Anglo-Jewish historiography, Polish-Jewish historiography, and American-Jewish historiography. History of women and Jewish women in particular became more widespread in the 1980s, such as the work of Paula Hyman and Judith Baskin. Beginning around 1970, a new Polish-Jewish historiography gradually arose, driven by reprints of works by Zinberg, Dubnow, and Baron, as well as new consideration by Bernard Dov Weinryb. Relevant authors in Polish-Jewish historiography are Meier Balaban, Yitzhak Schipper and Moses Schorr. The concept of microhistory has also arisen to describe a new movement in Jewish history led by Francesca Trivellato and Carlo Ginzburg. Steven Bowman is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and filled a gap in the study of Greek Jews. Hasia Diner wrote history of everyday Jewish communities while questioning myths and received wisdom. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932-2009) wrote Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1982) which explored the intersection of historical scholarship and Jewish collective memory, including mythology, religion and assimilation. The term Zakhor is an imperative "Remember," and the book discusses the author's perception of the decay in memory and the impact on the Jewish psyche; his core belief is that one can never stop being Jewish. It has been described as the "pathbreaking study on the relationship between Jewish historiography and memory from the biblical period to the modern age". Yerushalmi's work can be viewed largely as critique of the Wissenschaft. He was influenced by his teacher, Salo Baron, whose classes he attended at Columbia University where he later taught, and saw himself as a social historian of Jews, not of Judaism. Yerushalmi was born and lived most of his life in New York City, aside from a stint at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Whilst Yerushalmi's work largely centered on premodern Jewish histories, it set the stage for future analysis of modern Jewish histories, per his student Brenner. Yerushalmi deeply studied the Sephardim, such as Isaac Cardoso, particularly the marrano or converso, i.e. crypto-Jewish or forced Catholic secular Jews, which were a core historical interest. In addition to his work on the Sephardim, Yerushalmi's history also focused on German Jewish, not Eastern European Jewish social history, despite being American Eastern European Jewish himself. Yerushalmi wrote that: ...the secularization of Jewish history is a break with the past, [and] the historicizing of Judaism itself has been an equally significant departure... Only in the modern era do we really find, for the first time, a Jewish historiography divorced from Jewish collective memory and, in crucial respects, thoroughly at odds with it. To a large extent, of course, this reflects a universal and ever-growing modern dichotomy... Intrinsically, modern Jewish historiography cannot replace an eroded group memory which, as we have seen throughout, never depended on historians in the first place. The collective memories of the Jewish people were a function of the shared faith, cohesiveness, and will of the group itself, transmitting and recreating its past through an entire complex of interlocking social and religious institutions that functioned organically to achieve this. The decline of Jewish collective memory in modern times is only a symptom of the unraveling of that common network of belief and praxis through whose mechanisms, some of which we have examined, the past was once made present. Therein lies the root of the malady. Ultimately Jewish memory cannot be "healed" unless the group itself finds healing, unless its wholeness is restored or rejuvenated. But for the wounds inflicted upon Jewish life by the disintegrative blows of the last two hundred years the historian seems at best a pathologist, hardly a physician. Some scholars such as Bonfil, Yerushalmi's students David N. Myers and Marina Rustow, and Amos Funkenstein took issue with Yerushalmi's interpretation of the importance of Jewish historiography or its relative abundance in the medieval period. In particular, Funkenstein argues that collective memory is an earlier form of historical consciousness, not a fundamental break. Rustow says that Yerushalmi's core thesis rests on a narrow definition of historiography and explores the issue of historical particularism. Gavriel D. Rosenfeld writes that Yerushalmi's fear that history would overtake memory was unfounded. Myers writes that his teacher took the criticism of his paper, which contextualized the work as a post-Shoah malaise and a postmodern authorial perspective, hard, and did not know how to respond to it, leading to estrangement that lasted years before reconnecting shortly before his professor's death. Yerushalmi is also described by Rustow as practicing microhistory, that he did not believe in traditional methods, "heritage", "contributions", but sought a spirituality and "immanence" in his study of history. Yerushalmi was frustrated by "antiquarianism" and the anachronistic view of history. He had a complex relationship with the Jerusalem school of historians including Baer, whom he disagreed with, but was influenced by, and Scholem. He was also influenced by Lucien Febvre. Rustow, writes that Yerushalmi, like his teacher Baron, believed modernity to be a trade-off and that the role of the Church in protecting, as well as persecuting, the Jewish people of premodern Europe was "anti-lachrymose," and drew admiration from his teacher. However she writes that he agreed with Baer and Scholem that history could be only understood in Jewish terms, and disagreed with Baron's more integrationist view. Ultimately, he is criticized for accepting the sources of the Spanish Inquisition without characterizing their motive as anti-Jewish. One of Yerushalmi's major themes as expressed in the foreword to Zakhor is about a proposed return to previous modes of thinking. Michael A. Meyer's Ideas of Jewish History (1974) is a milestone in the study of modern Jewish histories, and Meyer's ideas were developed further by Ismar Schorsch's "From Text to Context" (1994). These works emphasized the transformation of Jewish historical understanding in the modern era and are significant in summarizing the evolution of modern Jewish histories. According to Michael Brenner, these works – like Yerushalmi's before them – underlined the "break between a traditional Jewish understanding of history and its modern transformation". Michael Brenner's Prophets of the Past, first published in German in 2006, was described by Michael A. Meyer as "the first broadly conceived history of modern Jewish historiography". Born in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Brenner studied under Yerushalmi at Columbia. Marina Rustow, a Princeton University professor and student of Yerushalmi's at Columbia, was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship and specializes in medieval Egypt, particularly the Cairo Geniza. Her 2008 work has changed the scholarly view of heresy with respect to the relative community interaction with the Karaites, a divergent group from the Rabbanite sect dominant in Judaism. References Bibliography |
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Contents Catholic Church God Schools Relations with: The Catholic Church (Latin: Ecclesia Catholica), commonly known as the Roman Catholic Church,[note 1] is the largest Christian denomination, with an estimated 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized members worldwide as of 2025. One of the world's oldest continuously functioning institutions, it has played a major role in the development of Western civilization. The Church comprises 24 sui iuris (autonomous) churches—the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches—which together include nearly 3,500 dioceses and eparchies governed by bishops. The pope, as bishop of Rome, serves as the Church's chief pastor. Catholic doctrine is rooted in the Nicene Creed. The Church teaches that it is the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" founded by Jesus Christ in the Great Commission;[note 2] that its bishops are the successors of the apostles; and that the pope is the successor of Saint Peter, to whom Christ entrusted a unique pastoral role. It holds that the apostolic teaching is transmitted through Scripture and sacred tradition, interpreted authentically by the magisterium, the Church's teaching authority. Catholic liturgical life includes the Roman Rite and other rites of the Latin Church, as well as the diverse liturgical traditions of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Religious orders, monastic communities, third orders, and lay movements contribute to a wide range of theological, spiritual, and devotional expressions within Catholicism. Among the Church's seven sacraments, the Eucharist is regarded as the central act of worship and is celebrated in the Mass. Catholics believe that through consecration by a priest, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, and is honored through doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception, perpetual virginity, and Assumption, as well as through numerous devotional practices. Catholic social teaching emphasizes care for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Church operates tens of thousands of educational and medical institutions worldwide and is the largest non-governmental provider of education and health care. It also supports a broad range of charitable and humanitarian organizations. The Catholic Church has exerted significant influence on Western philosophy, culture, art, literature, music, law, and science. Catholic communities are present worldwide through missions, migration, diaspora, and conversion. A majority of Catholics now reside in the Global South, reflecting demographic growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the effects of secularization in parts of Europe and North America. Relations between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church deteriorated gradually over many centuries. Although the mutual excommunications of 1054 are often cited as a symbolic turning point, modern scholarship views the definitive rupture as the result of a long process solidified by the Fourth Crusade, amid enduring theological, cultural, and political disputes, including disagreements over papal authority. Earlier separations occurred with the Church of the East after the Council of Ephesus (431) and with the Oriental Orthodox Churches following the Council of Chalcedon (451), primarily over Christological controversies. The Eastern Catholic Churches—today numbering roughly 18 million members—comprise Eastern Christian communities that remained in or later entered communion with the pope under varying historical circumstances. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century led to the emergence of new Christian traditions and prompted the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Since the late 20th century, the Church has faced sustained criticism concerning its teachings on sexuality, clerical celibacy, and abortion, as well as its prohibition of the ordination of women and its handling of cases of clerical sexual abuse. The Diocese of Rome, governed directly by the pope, constitutes his local jurisdiction, while the Holy See—the See of Rome—serves as the central governing authority of the Catholic Church. Its administrative apparatus, the Roman Curia, is based in Vatican City, an independent city-state enclaved within Rome, where the pope is head of state and functions as an elective absolute monarch. Name Catholic (from Greek: καθολικός, romanized: katholikos, lit. 'universal') is first attested as an adjective used to describe the church in the early second century. The first known use of the phrase "the catholic church" (Greek: καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία, romanized: katholikḕ ekklēsía) appears in a letter written around AD 100 by Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans,[note 3] which reads: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church." In the Catechetical Lectures (c. 350) of Cyril of Jerusalem, the name "Catholic Church" was used to distinguish it from other groups that also called themselves "the church". The "Catholic" notion was further emphasized in the edict De fide catolica, issued in 380 by Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire, when he established the state church of the Roman Empire. Since the East–West Schism of 1054, the Eastern Orthodox Church has taken the adjective "Orthodox" as its distinctive epithet; its official name continues to be the "Orthodox Catholic Church". The Latin Church was described as "Catholic", with that description also denoting those in communion with the Holy See after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when those who ceased to be in communion became known as Protestants. While the "Roman Church" has been used to describe the pope's Diocese of Rome since the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages (6th–10th century), "Roman Catholic Church" has been applied to the whole church in the English language since the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century. Further, some refer to the Latin Church as "Roman Catholic" in distinction from the Eastern Catholic churches. "Roman Catholic" has occasionally appeared in documents produced by the Holy See,[note 4] and has been used by certain national episcopal conferences and local dioceses.[note 5] The name "Catholic Church" for the whole church is used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1990) and the Code of Canon Law (1983). "Catholic Church" is also used in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and numerous other official documents. History The New Testament, particularly the Gospels, records Jesus' activities and teaching, his appointment of the Twelve Apostles, and his Great Commission to them, instructing them to continue his work. The Acts of Apostles recounts the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message throughout the Roman Empire. The Catholic Church teaches that its public ministry began on Pentecost, which occurred fifty days after the date on which Christ is believed to have risen from the dead. At Pentecost, the apostles are held to have received the Holy Spirit, preparing them for their mission of leading the Church. The Catholic Church further teaches that the college of bishops, led by the bishop of Rome, is the successor to the apostles. In the account of the Confession of Peter found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ designates Peter as the "rock" upon which his Church will be built. The Catholic Church considers the bishop of Rome, the pope, to be the successor of Saint Peter. Some scholars hold that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, while other scholars argue that the institution of the papacy does not depend on the view that Peter was bishop of Rome, or even on the claim that he ever resided in Rome. Many scholars maintain that a church structure consisting of multiple presbyters/bishops persisted in Rome until the mid-2nd century, when a structure with a single bishop and multiple presbyters was adopted, and that later writers retrospectively applied the title "bishop of Rome" to the most prominent members of the clergy in the earlier period, as well as to Peter himself. On this basis, Bart D. Ehrman argues Peter "could not have been the first bishop of Rome", while also noting that the church "did not have anyone as its bishop until about a hundred years after Peter's death." Raymond E. Brown likewise states that it is anachronistic to speak of Peter in terms of a local bishop of Rome, but that Christians of that period would have regarded Peter as exercising roles that contributed "to the development of the role of the papacy in the subsequent church". These roles, Brown argues, "contributed enormously to seeing the bishop of Rome ... as the successor of Peter ... for the church universal". The Roman Empire facilitated the spread of new ideas through its extensive network of roads and waterways, the relative security of the Pax Romana, and the promotion of a common culture with strong Greek influences, all of which allowed ideas to be more easily expressed and understood. However, unlike most religions in the Roman Empire, Christianity required its followers to renounce all other gods, a practice inherited from Judaism. Because Christians refused to participate in pagan festivals and civic rituals, they were excluded from many aspects of public life, leading some non-Christians, including government authorities, to fear that they were angering the gods and thereby threatening the peace and prosperity of the empire. The resulting prosecutions became a defining element of early Christian self-understanding until Christianity was legalized in the 4th century. In 313, Constantine the Great—the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity—issued the Edict of Milan, which legalized the Christian faith, and he moved the imperial capital to Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) in 330. In 380, the Edict of Thessalonica made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire, a status that continued within the shrinking territory of the Byzantine Empire until its fall in 1453. Elsewhere, the Church functioned independently of imperial authority, becoming especially evident after the East-West Schism. During the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, five principal sees emerged—Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—formalized in the mid-6th century, arranged by Justinian I, the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565, as the pentarchy. In 451, the Council of Chalcedon, in a canon of disputed validity, elevated the see of Constantinople to a role "second in eminence and power to the bishop of Rome". From c. 350 – c. 500, the bishops, or popes, of Rome steadily increased their authority through consistently intervening in helping orthodox leaders during theological disputes, which encouraged appeals to them. Emperor Justinian, under his controlled territories, established a form of caesaropapism where he could regulate "the minutest details of worship and discipline" and "theologian opinions" in the Church—establishing imperial influence over Rome and other Western territories again. This act created the Byzantine Papacy period (537–752) in which popes required approval from the emperor or his representative for consecration, leading to most being selected by the emperor from his Greek-speaking subjects, which created a "melting pot" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions in art and liturgy. In the following centuries, Germanic tribes who invaded the Roman Empire adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which the Council of Nicaea declared heretical, causing discord between Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects. In 497, Clovis I, the Frankish ruler, converted to orthodox Catholicism and he aligned himself with the papacy and the monastic communities—an act that unified Germanic rulers and Catholic subjects for the most part. Following his lead, the Visigoths converted to Catholicism in 589, and the Lombards in Italy gradually adopted it during the 7th century. Western Christianity—particularly through its monastic institutions—played a massive role in preserving classical civilization, including its artistic traditions and literacy. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–543), one of the founders of Western monasticism, with his Rule, exerted a crucial influence on European culture with his appropriation of the Church's monastic spiritual heritage and his preservation and transmission of ancient culture with the spread of the Benedictine tradition. During this time, monastic Ireland became a center of scholarship; early Irish missionaries such as Columbanus and Columba spread Christianity and established monasteries across continental Europe. From Late Antiquity to the dawn of the modern age, the Catholic Church held a dominant influence on Western civilization, being the primary sponsor of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque styles in art, architecture, and music—including visual artists like Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Titian, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Caravaggio. A Stanford University historian Paul Legutko said the Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions" of Western civilization. Monks established the first universities in Europe in the time of Western Christendom. In higher education, several older cathedral schools became universities beginning in the 11th century, including the University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna. Dating back to 6th-century AD, monks and nuns spearheaded higher education with Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools. These new universities expanded their curriculums to include academic programs for clerics, lawyers, civil servants, and physicians. Thus, due to its initial origins, the university is generally regarded as starting in a Medieval Christian setting. Massive mid-7th century Islamic invasions elongated the struggles of power between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basis; the Byzantine Empire lost its lands of the eastern patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch were reduced to Constantinople, the empire's capital, and the Frankish state, centered away from the Islamic domination of the Mediterranean, evolved into the dominant power that shaped the Western Europe of the Middle Ages. Battles in Toulouse and Tours halted Islamic advancements in the West; a failed siege of Constantinople halted them in the East. In 751, the Byzantine Empire lost the city of Ravenna, which governed the small fragments of Italy, including Rome, to the Lombards, meaning confirmation by a no longer existent exarch was not asked during the election of Pope Stephen II in 752—the papacy had to look elsewhere for a civil power to protect it. The Frankish king Pepin the Short conquered the Lombards in 754 at the urgent request of Pope Stephen, and then gifted the lands back to the pope, initiating the time of the Papal States. In the 860s, Rome and the Byzantine East had a conflict during the Photian schism, as Photius criticized the Latin West for adding the filioque clause, after being excommunicated by Nicholas I, causing unresolved issues that led to further divisions. In the 11th century the efforts of Hildebrand of Sovana led to the creation of the College of Cardinals to elect new popes, starting with Pope Alexander II in the papal election of 1061. When Alexander II died, Hildebrand was elected to succeed him, as Pope Gregory VII. The basic election system of the College of Cardinals which Gregory VII helped establish has continued to function into the 21st century. Pope Gregory VII further initiated the Gregorian Reforms regarding the independence of the clergy from secular authority. This led to the Investiture Controversy between the church and the Holy Roman Emperors, over which had the authority to appoint bishops and popes. In 1095 the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, appealed to Pope Urban II for help against renewed Muslim invasions in the Byzantine–Seljuk wars, which caused Urban to launch the First Crusade aimed at aiding the Byzantine Empire and returning the Holy Land to Christian control. In the 11th century strained relations between the primarily Greek church and the Latin Church separated them in the East–West Schism, partially due to conflicts over papal authority. The Fourth Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople by renegade crusaders proved the final breach. In the twelfth century, inquisitions began in the Catholic Kingdom of France in response to the Albigensians. The system spread throughout other European countries in the succeeding centuries, through multiple forms: first as individual inquisitors sporadically appointed for certain problem areas by popes, then as state-sponsored tribunals. The ad hoc use of torture by secular medieval judges was common, and the directives governing inquisitions progressively allowed various situations where non-maiming, non-bloody torture could or must be used to corroborate testimony, not only on some classes of accused but sometimes even on denouncers and witnesses. In the early 13th century mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán. The studia conventualia and studia generalia of the mendicant orders played a large role in the transformation of church-sponsored cathedral schools and palace schools, such as that of Charlemagne at Aachen, into the prominent universities of Europe. Scholastic theologians and philosophers such as the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas studied and taught at these studia. Aquinas' Summa Theologica was an intellectual milestone in its synthesis of the legacy of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle with the content of Christian revelation. A growing sense of church-state conflicts marked the 14th century. In 1309, to escape instability in Rome, Pope Clement V became the first of seven popes to reside in the fortified city of Avignon in southern France during a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the pope returned to Rome. In 1378 a 38-year-long Western Schism began, with claimants to the papacy located in Rome, Avignon and, after 1409, Pisa. The matter was largely resolved in 1414–1418 at the Council of Constance, with the claimants in Rome and Pisa agreeing to resign and the third claimant excommunicated by the cardinals, who held a new election naming Martin V pope. In 1438 the Council of Florence convened, which featured a strong dialogue focussed on understanding the theological differences between the East and West, with the hope of reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Several eastern churches reunited, forming the majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The Age of Discovery beginning in the 15th century saw the expansion of Western Europe's political and cultural influence worldwide. Because of the rise in power overseas of strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal (as well as France), Catholicism was spread to the Americas, Asia and Oceania by explorers, conquistadors, and missionaries, as well as by the conversion of people who lived in these societies to the Catholic faith. Pope Alexander VI had awarded sovereignty rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal (later confirmed by the Treaty of Tordesillas) and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies. In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines. Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China and Japan. The French colonization of the Americas beginning in the 16th century established a Catholic Francophone population and forbade non-Catholics to settle in Quebec. In 1415 popular Bohemian preacher Jan Hus was burned at the stake for refusing to recant Wycliffite heresies. His "hot-headed" reform efforts presaged Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar in Germany, who sent a list of topics for academic disputation, the Ninety-five Theses, to several bishops in 1517. His theses protested against some Catholic doctrines as well as contemporary practices such as the supposed sale of indulgences, and these were the start of a rapidly escalating series of inflammatory works ending with On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) which accused the Pope of being the anti-Christ: this led to his excommunication in 1521. In Switzerland Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and other Protestant Reformers further criticized certain Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Reformation, which gave birth to the great majority of Protestant denominations and also crypto-Protestantism within the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, Henry VIII of the Kingdom of England petitioned Pope Clement VII for a declaration of nullity concerning his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. When this was denied, he had the Acts of Supremacy passed to make himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, spurring the English Reformation and the eventual development of Anglicanism. The Reformation contributed to clashes between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his allies. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict—the Thirty Years' War—which broke out in 1618. In France a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the forces of the French Catholic League, which were backed and funded by a series of popes. This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV of France's 1598 Edict of Nantes granting civil and religious toleration to French Protestants. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) became the driving force behind the Counter-Reformation in response to the Protestant movement. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed many central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation, the keeping of the sacraments, and the requirement of good works anchored in love and hope to justify one's salvation, as well as faith as a necessary condition to attain such salvation. In subsequent centuries, Catholicism spread widely across the world, in part through missionaries and imperialism, although its hold on European populations declined due to the growth of religious scepticism during and after the Enlightenment. From the 17th century onward, the Enlightenment questioned the power and influence of the Catholic Church over Western society. In the 18th century, writers such as Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes wrote biting critiques of both religion and the Catholic Church. One target of their criticism was the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France, which ended a century-long policy of religious toleration of Protestant Huguenots. As the papacy resisted pushes for Gallicanism, the French Revolution in 1789 shifted power to the state, caused the destruction of churches, the establishment of a Cult of Reason, and the martyrdom of nuns during the Reign of Terror. In 1798 Napoleon's General Louis-Alexandre Berthier invaded the Italian Peninsula, imprisoning Pope Pius VI, who died in captivity. Napoleon later re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801. The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States. In 1854 Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops, whom he had consulted from 1851 to 1853, proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a dogma in the Catholic Church. In 1870 the First Vatican Council affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in specifically defined pronouncements, striking a blow to the rival position of conciliarism. Controversy over this and other issues resulted in a breakaway movement called the Old Catholic Church. The Italian unification of the 1860s incorporated the Papal States, including Rome itself from 1870, into the Kingdom of Italy, thus ending the papacy's temporal power. In response Pius IX excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II, refused payment for the land and rejected the Italian Law of Guarantees, which granted him special privileges. To avoid placing himself in visible subjection to the Italian authorities, he remained a "prisoner in the Vatican". This stand-off, which was spoken of as the Roman question, was resolved by the Lateran Treaty in 1929, whereby the Holy See acknowledged Italian sovereignty over the former Papal States in return for payment and Italy's recognition of papal sovereignty over Vatican City as a new sovereign and independent state. Catholic missionaries generally supported, and sought to facilitate, the European imperial powers' conquest of Africa during the late nineteenth century. According to the historian of religion Adrian Hastings, Catholic missionaries were generally unwilling to defend African rights or encourage Africans to see themselves as equals to Europeans, in contrast to Protestant missionaries, who were more willing to oppose colonial injustices. During the 20th century, the church's global reach continued to grow, despite the rise of anti-Catholic authoritarian regimes and the collapse of European Empires, accompanied by a general decline in religious observance in the West. Under the popes Benedict XV and Pius XII the Holy See sought to maintain public neutrality through the World Wars, acting as peace broker and delivering aid to the victims of the conflicts. In the 1960s Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, which ushered in radical change to church ritual and practice, and in the later 20th century the long papacy of Pope John Paul II contributed to the fall of communism in Europe, and a new public and international role for the papacy. From the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticized for its doctrines on sexuality, its inability to ordain women and its handling of sexual abuse cases. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) introduced the most significant changes to Catholic practices since the Council of Trent, four centuries before. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, this ecumenical council modernized the practices of the Catholic Church, allowing the Mass to be said in the vernacular (local language) and encouraging "fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations". It intended to engage the church more closely with the present world (aggiornamento), which was described by its advocates as an "opening of the windows". In addition to changes in the liturgy, it led to changes to the church's approach to ecumenism, and a call to improved relations with non-Christian religions, especially Judaism, in its document Nostra aetate. The council, however, generated significant controversy in implementing its reforms: proponents of the "Spirit of Vatican II" such as the Swiss theologian Hans Küng said that Vatican II had "not gone far enough" to change church policies. Traditionalist Catholics, such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, however, strongly criticized the council, arguing that its liturgical reforms led "to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments", among other issues. The teaching on the morality of contraception also came under scrutiny; after a series of disagreements, Humanae vitae upheld the church's prohibition of all forms of contraception.[note 6] In 1978 Pope John Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Kraków in the Polish People's Republic, became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. His 26 1/2-year pontificate was one of the longest in history and was credited with hastening the fall of communism in Europe. John Paul II sought to evangelize an increasingly secular world. He travelled more than any other pope, visiting 129 countries, and used television and radio as means of spreading the church's teachings. He also emphasized the dignity of work and natural rights of labourers to have fair wages and safe conditions in Laborem exercens. He emphasized several church teachings, including moral exhortations against abortion, euthanasia and against the widespread use of capital punishment, in Evangelium Vitae. Pope Benedict XVI, elected in 2005, was known for upholding traditional Christian values against secularization, and for increasing use of the Tridentine Mass as found in the Roman Missal of 1962, which he titled the "Extraordinary Form". Citing the frailties of advanced age, Benedict resigned in 2013, becoming the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years. Pope Francis became in 2013 the first pope from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first from outside Europe since the eighth-century Gregory III. Francis made efforts to further close Catholicism's estrangement with the Eastern churches. His installation was attended by Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the first time since the Great Schism of 1054 that the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has attended a papal installation, while he also met Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the largest Eastern Orthodox church, in 2016; this was reported as the first such high-level meeting between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054. In 2017 during a visit in Egypt, Pope Francis re-established mutual recognition of baptism with the Coptic Orthodox Church. Pope Leo XIV was elected as Pope in the 2025 conclave, following the death of Francis. He is the first Augustinian pope, the first North American pope (born in Chicago in the United States), and the first pope of Peruvian citizenship. Organization The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church. There are three levels of clergy: the episcopate, composed of bishops who hold jurisdiction over a geographic area called a diocese or eparchy; the presbyterate, composed of priests ordained by bishops and who work in local dioceses or religious orders; and the diaconate, composed of deacons who assist bishops and priests in a variety of ministerial roles. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the bishop of Rome, known as the pope (Latin: papa, lit. 'father'), whose jurisdiction is called the Holy See (Sancta Sedes in Latin). In parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both. Additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services. The Catholic Church has been described as the oldest multinational organization in the world. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is headed[note 7] by the pope, currently Pope Leo XIV, who was elected on 8 May 2025 by a papal conclave. The office of the pope is known as the papacy. The Catholic Church holds that Christ instituted the papacy upon giving the keys of Heaven to Saint Peter. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the Holy See, or the Apostolic See (meaning the see of the apostle Peter). Directly serving the pope is the Roman Curia, the central governing body that administers the day-to-day business of the Catholic Church. The pope is also sovereign of Vatican City, a small city-state entirely enclaved within the city of Rome, which is an entity distinct from the Holy See. It is as head of the Holy See, not as head of Vatican City State, that the pope receives ambassadors of states and sends them his own diplomatic representatives. The position of cardinal is a rank of honour bestowed by popes on certain clerics, such as leaders within the Roman Curia, bishops serving in major cities and distinguished theologians. For advice and assistance in governing, the pope may turn to the College of Cardinals. Following the death or resignation of a pope,[note 8] members of the College of Cardinals who are under age 80 act as an electoral college, meeting in a papal conclave to elect a successor. Although the conclave may elect any male Catholic in the world as pope, since 1389 only cardinals have been elected. Catholic canon law (Latin: jus canonicum) is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church. The canon law of the Latin Church was the first modern Western legal system, and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, while the distinctive traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris. Positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from promulgation by the supreme legislator—the Supreme Pontiff—who possesses the totality of legislative, executive and judicial power in his person, while particular laws derive formal authority from promulgation by a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator, whether an ordinary or a delegated legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition. It has all the ordinary elements of a mature legal system: laws, courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code for the Latin Church as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches, principles of legal interpretation, and coercive penalties. Canon law concerns the Catholic Church's life and organization and is distinct from civil law. In its own field it gives force to civil law only by specific enactment in matters such as the guardianship of minors. Similarly, civil law may give force in its field to canon law, but only by specific enactment, as with regard to canonical marriages. Currently, the 1983 Code of Canon Law is in effect for the Latin Church. The distinct 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO, after the Latin initials) applies to the autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches. In the first thousand years of Catholic history, different varieties of Christianity developed in the Western and Eastern Christian areas of Europe, Asia and Africa. Though most Eastern-tradition churches are no longer in communion with the Catholic Church after the Great Schism of 1054 (as well as the earlier Nestorian Schism and Chalcedonian Schism), 23 autonomous particular churches of eastern traditions participate in the Catholic communion, also known as "churches sui iuris" (Latin: "of one's own right"). The largest and most well known is the Latin Church, the only Western-tradition church, with more than 1 billion members worldwide. Relatively small in terms of adherents compared to the Latin Church, are the 23 self-governing Eastern Catholic Churches with a combined membership of 17.3 million as of 2010[update]. The Latin Church is governed by the pope and diocesan bishops directly appointed by him. The pope exercises a direct patriarchal role over the Latin Church, which is considered to form the original and still major part of Western Christianity, a heritage of certain beliefs and customs originating in Europe and northwestern Africa, some of which are inherited by many Christian denominations that trace their origins to the Protestant Reformation. The Eastern Catholic Churches follow the traditions and spirituality of Eastern Christianity and are churches that have always remained in full communion with the Catholic Church or who have chosen to re-enter full communion in the centuries following the East–West Schism or earlier divisions. These churches are communities of Catholic Christians whose forms of worship reflect distinct historical and cultural influences rather than differences in doctrine. The pope's recognition of Eastern Catholic Churches has caused controversy in ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox and other eastern churches. Historically, pressure to conform to the norms of the Western Christianity practised by the majority Latin Church led to a degree of encroachment (Liturgical Latinisation) on some of the Eastern Catholic traditions. The Second Vatican Council document, Orientalium Ecclesiarum, built on previous reforms to reaffirm the right of Eastern Catholics to maintain their distinct liturgical practices. A church sui iuris is defined in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches as a "group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy" that is recognized by the pope in his capacity as the supreme authority on matters of doctrine within the church. The Eastern Catholic Churches are in full communion with the pope, but have governance structures and liturgical traditions separate from that of the Latin Church. Some Eastern Catholic churches are governed by a patriarch who is elected by the synod of the bishops of that church, others are headed by a major archbishop, others are under a metropolitan, and others are organized as individual eparchies. Each church has authority over the particulars of its internal organization, liturgical rites, liturgical calendar and other aspects of its spirituality, subject only to the authority of the pope. The Roman Curia has a specific department, the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, to maintain relations with them. Individual countries, regions, and major cities are served by particular churches known as dioceses in the Latin Church, or eparchies in the Eastern Catholic Churches, each of which are overseen by a bishop. As of 2021[update], the Catholic Church has 3,171 dioceses globally. The bishops in a particular country are members of a national or regional episcopal conference. Dioceses are divided into parishes, each with one or more priests, deacons, or lay ecclesial ministers. Parishes are responsible for the day to day celebration of the sacraments and pastoral care of the laity. As of 2016[update] there are approximately 221,700 parishes worldwide. In the Latin Church, Catholic men may serve as deacons or priests by receiving sacramental ordination. Men and women may serve as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, as readers (lectors), or as altar servers. Historically, boys and men have only been permitted to serve as altar servers; however, since the 1990s, girls and women have also been permitted.[note 9] Catholics may enter into consecrated life either on an individual basis, as a hermit or consecrated virgin, or by joining an institute of consecrated life (a religious institute or a secular institute) in which to take vows confirming their desire to follow the three evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience. Examples of institutes of consecrated life are the Benedictines, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Legionaries of Christ and the Sisters of Mercy. "Religious institutes" is a modern term encompassing both "religious orders" and "religious congregations", which were once distinguished in canon law. The terms "religious order" and "religious institute" tend to be used as synonyms colloquially. By means of Catholic charities and beyond, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world. As of 2020 Catholicism is the second-largest religious body in the world after Sunni Islam. Catholics represent about half of all Christians. According to the World Christian Database, there are 1.272 billion Catholics globally, as of 2025. According to the Annuario Pontificio, church membership, defined as baptized Catholics, was 1.406 billion at the end of 2023, which was 17.4% of the world population: Under Pope Francis the church membership grew by almost 11%, with growth concentrated in Africa and loss in Europe. Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world, followed by Mexico, the Philippines and the United States. Geographic distribution of Catholics worldwide continues to shift, with 20.0% in Africa, 47.8% in the Americas, 11.0% in Asia, 20.4% in Europe and 0.8% in Oceania. Catholic ministers include ordained clergy, lay ecclesial ministers, missionaries and catechists. Also as of the end of 2023, there were 463,859 ordained clergy, including 5,430 bishops, 406,996 priests (diocesan and religious) and 51,433 deacons (permanent). Non-ordained ministers, as at October 2024, include 2,883,049 catechists and 413,561 lay missionaries. Catholics who have committed to religious or consecrated life instead of marriage or single celibacy, as a state of life or relational vocation, include 49,414 male religious (as of 2022) and 589,423 women religious (as of 2023). These are not ordained, nor generally considered ministers unless also engaged in one of the lay minister categories above. Doctrine Catholic doctrine has developed over the centuries, reflecting direct teachings of early Christians, formal definitions of heretical and orthodox beliefs by ecumenical councils and in papal bulls, and theological debate by scholars. The church believes that it is continually guided by the Holy Spirit as it discerns new theological issues and is protected infallibly from falling into doctrinal error when a firm decision on an issue is reached. It teaches that revelation has one common source, God, and two distinct modes of transmission: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and that these are authentically interpreted by the Magisterium. Sacred Scripture consists of the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, consisting of 46 Old Testament and 27 New Testament writings. Sacred Tradition consists of those teachings believed by the church to have been handed down since the time of the Apostles. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are collectively known as the "deposit of faith" (depositum fidei in Latin). These are in turn interpreted by the Magisterium (from magister, Latin for "teacher"), the church's teaching authority, which is exercised by the pope and the College of Bishops in union with the pope. Catholic doctrine is authoritatively summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published by the Holy See. The Catholic Church holds that there is one eternal God, who exists as a perichoresis ("mutual indwelling") of three hypostases, or "persons": God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit (also called the Holy Ghost), which together are called the "Holy Trinity". Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the "Second Person" of the Trinity, God the Son. In an event known as the Incarnation, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature through the conception of Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ, therefore, is understood as being both fully divine and fully human, including possessing a human soul. It is taught that Christ's mission on earth included giving people his teachings and providing his example for them to follow as recorded in the four Gospels. Jesus is believed to have remained sinless while on earth, and to have allowed himself to be unjustly executed by crucifixion, as a sacrifice of himself to reconcile humanity to God; this reconciliation is known as the Paschal Mystery. The Greek term "Christ" and the Hebrew "Messiah" both mean "anointed one", referring to the Christian belief that Jesus' death and resurrection are the fulfilment of the Old Testament's messianic prophecies. The Catholic Church teaches dogmatically that "the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles but as from one single principle". It holds that the Father, as the "principle without principle", is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that he, as Father of the only Son, is with the Son the single principle from which the Spirit proceeds. This belief is expressed in the Filioque clause which was added to the Latin version of the Nicene Creed of 381 but not included in the Greek versions of the creed used in Eastern Christianity. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the "one true church", "the universal sacrament of salvation for the human race", and "the one true religion". According to the Catechism, the Catholic Church is further described in the Nicene Creed as the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church". These are collectively known as the Four Marks of the Church. The church teaches that its founder is Jesus Christ. The New Testament records several events considered integral to the establishment of the Catholic Church, including Jesus' activities and teaching and his appointment of the apostles as witnesses to his ministry, suffering, and resurrection. The Great Commission, after his resurrection, instructed the apostles to continue his work. The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, is seen as the beginning of the public ministry of the Catholic Church. The church teaches that all duly consecrated bishops have a lineal succession from the apostles of Christ, known as apostolic succession. In particular, the Bishop of Rome (the pope) is considered the successor to the apostle Simon Peter, a position from which he derives his supremacy over the church. Catholic belief holds that the church "is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth" and that it alone possesses the full means of salvation. Through the passion (suffering) of Christ leading to his crucifixion as described in the Gospels, it is said Christ made himself an oblation to God the Father to reconcile humanity to God; the Resurrection of Jesus makes him the firstborn from the dead, the first among many brethren. By reconciling with God and following Christ's words and deeds, an individual can enter the Kingdom of God. The church sees its liturgy and sacraments as perpetuating the graces achieved through Christ's sacrifice to strengthen a person's relationship with Christ and aid in overcoming sin. The Catholic Church teaches that, immediately after death, the soul of each person will receive a particular judgement from God, based on their sins and their relationship to Christ. This teaching also attests to another day when Christ will sit in universal judgement of all mankind. This final judgement, according to the Church's teaching, will bring an end to human history and mark the beginning of both a new and better heaven and earth ruled by God in righteousness. Depending on the judgement rendered following death, it is believed that a soul may enter one of three states of the afterlife: While the Catholic Church teaches that it alone possesses the full means of salvation, it also acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of Christian communities separated from itself to "impel towards Catholic unity" and "tend and lead toward the Catholic Church", and thus bring people to salvation, because these separated communities contain some elements of proper doctrine, albeit admixed with errors. It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved outside of the ordinary means known as baptism of desire, and by pre-baptismal martyrdom, known as baptism of blood, as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation. The Vatican II document Lumen gentium further clarifies the possibility of salvation of those who "through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart," being "moved by (divine) grace"."CCC, 847". Vatican.va. A saint (also historically known as a hallow) is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God, while canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares that a person who has died was a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the "canon", or list, of recognized saints. The first persons honoured as saints were the martyrs. By the fourth century, however, "confessors"—people who had confessed their faith not by dying but by suffering—began to be venerated publicly. In the Catholic Church, both in Latin and Eastern Catholic churches, the act of canonization is reserved to the Apostolic See and occurs at the conclusion of a long process requiring extensive proof that the candidate for canonization lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he is worthy to be recognized as a saint. The church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the person is now in Heaven and that he may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the church, including in the Litany of the Saints. Canonization allows universal veneration of the saint in the liturgy of the Roman Rite; for permission to venerate merely locally, only beatification is needed. Devotions are "external practices of piety" which are not part of the official liturgy of the Catholic Church but are part of the popular spiritual practices of Catholics. These include various practices regarding the veneration of the saints, especially veneration of the Virgin Mary. Other devotional practices include the Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Face of Jesus, the various scapulars, novenas to various saints, pilgrimages and devotions to the Blessed Sacrament, and the veneration of saintly images such as the santos. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council reminded Catholics that "devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some fashion derived from it, and lead the people to it, since, in fact, the liturgy by its very nature far surpasses any of them." Catholic Mariology deals with the dogmas and teachings concerning the life of Mary, mother of Jesus, as well as the veneration of Mary by the faithful. Mary is held in special regard, declared the Mother of God (Greek: Θεοτόκος, romanized: Theotokos, lit. 'God-bearer'), and believed as dogma to have remained a virgin throughout her life. Further teachings include the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception (her own conception without the stain of original sin) and the Assumption of Mary (that her body was assumed directly into heaven at the end of her life). Both of these doctrines were defined as infallible dogma, by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and Pope Pius XII in 1950 respectively, but only after consulting with the Catholic bishops throughout the world to ascertain that this is a Catholic belief. In the Eastern Catholic churches, however, they continue to celebrate the feast of the Assumption under the name of the Dormition of the Mother of God on the same date. The teaching that Mary died before being assumed significantly precedes the idea that she did not. St John Damascene wrote that "St Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria, who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of St Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to Heaven." Devotions to Mary are part of Catholic piety but are distinct from the worship of God. Practices include prayers and Marian art, music and architecture. Several liturgical Marian feasts are celebrated throughout the Church Year and she is honoured with many titles such as Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul VI called her Mother of the Church because, by giving birth to Christ, she is considered to be the spiritual mother to each member of the Body of Christ. Because of her influential role in the life of Jesus, prayers and devotions such as the Hail Mary, the Rosary, the Salve Regina and the Memorare are common Catholic practices. Pilgrimage to the sites of several Marian apparitions affirmed by the church, such as Lourdes, Fátima and Guadalupe, are also popular Catholic devotions. Sacraments The Catholic Church teaches that it was entrusted with seven sacraments that were instituted by Christ. The number and nature of the sacraments were defined by several ecumenical councils, most recently the Council of Trent.[note 10] These are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction, one of the "Last Rites"), Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony. Sacraments are visible rituals that Catholics see as signs of God's presence and effective channels of God's grace to all those who receive them with the proper disposition (ex opere operato). The Catechism of the Catholic Church categorizes the sacraments into three groups, the "sacraments of Christian initiation", "sacraments of healing" and "sacraments at the service of communion and the mission of the faithful". These groups broadly reflect the stages of people's natural and spiritual lives which each sacrament is intended to serve. The liturgies of the sacraments are central to the church's mission. According to the Catechism: In the liturgy of the New Covenant every liturgical action, especially the celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments, is an encounter between Christ and the Church. The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the "communion of the Holy Spirit" who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ. This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities. According to church doctrine, the sacraments of the church require the proper form, matter, and intent to be validly celebrated. In addition, the Canon Laws for both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches govern who may licitly celebrate certain sacraments, as well as strict rules about who may receive the sacraments. Notably, because the church teaches that Christ is present in the Eucharist, those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden to receive the sacrament until they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance). Catholics are normally obliged to abstain from eating for at least an hour before receiving the sacrament. Non-Catholics are ordinarily prohibited from receiving the Eucharist as well. Catholics, even if they were in danger of death and unable to approach a Catholic minister, may not ask for the sacraments of the Eucharist, penance or anointing of the sick from someone, such as a Protestant minister, who is not known to be validly ordained in line with Catholic teaching on ordination. Likewise, even in grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may not administer these sacraments to those who do not manifest Catholic faith in the sacrament. In relation to the churches of Eastern Christianity not in communion with the Holy See, the Catholic Church is less restrictive, declaring that "a certain communion in sacris, and so in the Eucharist, given suitable circumstances and the approval of Church authority, is not merely possible but is encouraged." As viewed by the Catholic Church, Baptism is the first of three sacraments of initiation as a Christian. It washes away all sins, both original sin and personal actual sins. It makes a person a member of the church. As a gratuitous gift of God that requires no merit on the part of the person who is baptized, it is conferred even on children, who, though they have no personal sins, need it on account of original sin. If a new-born child is in a danger of death, anyone—be it a doctor, a nurse, or a parent—may baptize the child. Baptism marks a person permanently and cannot be repeated. The Catholic Church recognizes as valid baptisms conferred even by people who are not Catholics or Christians, provided that they intend to baptize ("to do what the Church does when she baptizes") and that they use the Trinitarian baptismal formula. The Catholic Church sees the sacrament of confirmation as required to complete the grace given in baptism. When adults are baptized, confirmation is normally given immediately afterwards, a practice followed even with newly baptized infants in the Eastern Catholic Churches. In the West confirmation of children is delayed until they are old enough to understand or at the bishop's discretion. In Western Christianity, particularly Catholicism, the sacrament is called confirmation, because it confirms and strengthens the grace of baptism; in the Eastern Churches, it is called chrismation, because the essential rite is the anointing of the person with chrism, a mixture of olive oil and some perfumed substance, usually balsam, blessed by a bishop. Those who receive confirmation must be in a state of grace, which for those who have reached the age of reason means that they should first be cleansed spiritually by the sacrament of Penance; they should also have the intention of receiving the sacrament, and be prepared to show in their lives that they are Christians. For Catholics, the Eucharist is the sacrament which completes Christian initiation. It is described as "the source and summit of the Christian life". The ceremony in which a Catholic first receives the Eucharist is known as First Communion. The Eucharistic celebration, also called the Mass or Divine liturgy, includes prayers and scriptural readings, as well as an offering of bread and wine, which are brought to the altar and consecrated by the priest to become the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, a change called transubstantiation.[note 11] The words of consecration reflect the words spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, where Christ offered his body and blood to his Apostles the night before his crucifixion. The sacrament re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and perpetuates it. Christ's death and resurrection give grace through the sacrament that unites the faithful with Christ and one another, remits venial sin, and aids against committing moral sin (though mortal sin itself is forgiven through the sacrament of penance). The Sacrament of Penance (also called Reconciliation, Forgiveness, Confession, and Conversion) exists for the conversion of those who, after baptism, separate themselves from Christ by sin. Essential to this sacrament are acts both by the sinner (examination of conscience, contrition with a determination not to sin again, confession to a priest, and performance of some act to repair the damage caused by sin) and by the priest (determination of the act of reparation to be performed and absolution). Serious sins (mortal sins) should be confessed at least once a year and always before receiving Holy Communion, while confession of venial sins also is recommended. The priest is bound under the severest penalties to maintain the "seal of confession", absolute secrecy about any sins revealed to him in confession. While chrism is used only for the three sacraments that cannot be repeated, a different oil is used by a priest or bishop to bless a Catholic who, because of illness or old age, has begun to be in danger of death. This sacrament, known as Anointing of the Sick, is believed to give comfort, peace, courage and, if the sick person is unable to make a confession, even forgiveness of sins. The sacrament is also referred to as Unction, and in the past as Extreme Unction, and it is one of the three sacraments that constitute the last rites, together with Penance and Viaticum (Eucharist). According to the Catechism, there are two sacraments of communion directed towards the salvation of others: priesthood and marriage. Within the general vocation to be a Christian, these two sacraments "consecrate to specific mission or vocation among the people of God. Men receive the holy orders to feed the Church by the word and grace. Spouses marry so that their love may be fortified to fulfil duties of their state". The sacrament of Holy Orders consecrates and deputes some Christians to serve the whole body as members of three degrees or orders: episcopate (bishops), presbyterate (priests) and diaconate (deacons). The church has defined rules on who may be ordained into the clergy. In the Latin Church the priesthood is generally restricted to celibate men, and the episcopate is always restricted to celibate men. Men who are already married may be ordained in certain Eastern Catholic churches in most countries, and the personal ordinariates and may become deacons even in the Latin Church (see Clerical marriage). After becoming a Catholic priest, a man may not marry (see Clerical celibacy) unless he is formally laicized. All clergy, whether deacons, priests or bishops, may preach, teach, baptize, witness marriages and conduct funeral liturgies. Only bishops and priests can administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Reconciliation (Penance) and Anointing of the Sick. Only bishops can administer the sacrament of Holy Orders, which ordains someone into the clergy. The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a social and spiritual bond between a man and a woman, ordered towards the good of the spouses and procreation of children; according to Catholic teachings on sexual morality, it is the only appropriate context for sexual activity. A Catholic marriage, or any marriage between baptized individuals of any Christian denomination, is viewed as a sacrament. A sacramental marriage, once consummated, cannot be dissolved except by death.[note 12] The church recognizes certain conditions, such as freedom of consent, as required for any marriage to be valid; In addition, the church sets specific rules and norms, known as canonical form, that Catholics must follow. The church does not recognize divorce as ending a valid marriage and allows state-recognized divorce only as a means of protecting the property and well-being of the spouses and any children. However, consideration of particular cases by the competent ecclesiastical tribunal can lead to declaration of the invalidity of a marriage, a declaration usually referred to as an annulment. Remarriage following a divorce is not permitted unless the prior marriage was declared invalid. Liturgy Among the 24 autonomous (sui iuris) churches, numerous liturgical and other traditions exist, called rites, which reflect historical and cultural diversity rather than differences in belief. In the definition of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, "a rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of history of a distinct people, by which its own manner of living the faith is manifested in each Church sui iuris". The liturgy of the sacrament of the Eucharist, called the Mass in the West and Divine Liturgy or other names in the East, is the principal liturgy of the Catholic Church. This is because it is considered the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ himself. Eastern Catholic Churches have their own rites: the liturgies of the Eucharist and the other sacraments vary from rite to rite, reflecting different theological emphases. The Roman Rite is the most common rite of worship used by the Catholic Church, with the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite form of the Mass. Its use is found worldwide, originating in Rome and spreading throughout Europe, influencing and eventually supplanting local rites. The present ordinary form of Mass in the Roman Rite, found in the post-1969 editions of the Roman Missal, is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, using an officially approved translation from the original text in Latin. Its most widely used form was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and revised by Pope John Paul II in 2001. In certain circumstances, the 1962 form of the Roman Rite remains authorized in the Latin Church. Since 2014, clergy in the small personal ordinariates set up for groups of former Anglicans under the terms of the 2009 document Anglicanorum Coetibus are permitted to use a variation of the Roman Rite called "Divine Worship" or, less formally, "Ordinariate Use", which incorporates elements of the Anglican liturgy and traditions.[note 13] In the Archdiocese of Milan, with around five million Catholics the largest in Europe, Mass is celebrated according to the Ambrosian Rite. Other Latin Church rites include the Mozarabic and those of some religious institutes. These liturgical rites have an antiquity of at least 200 years before 1570, the date of Pope Pius V's Quo primum, and were thus allowed to continue. The Eastern Catholic Churches share common patrimony and liturgical rites as their counterparts, including Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches who are no longer in communion with the Holy See. These include churches that historically developed in Russia, Caucasus, the Balkans, North Eastern Africa, India and the Middle East. The Eastern Catholic Churches are groups of faithful who have either never been out of communion with the Holy See or who have restored communion with it at the cost of breaking communion with their associates of the same tradition. The liturgical rites of the Eastern Catholic Churches include the Byzantine Rite (in its Antiochian, Greek and Slavonic recensions), the Alexandrian Rite, the West Syrian Rite, the Armenian Rite, and the East Syriac Rite. Eastern Catholic Churches have the autonomy to set the particulars of their liturgical forms and worship, within certain limits to protect the "accurate observance" of their liturgical tradition. In the past, some of the rites used by the Eastern Catholic Churches were subject to a degree of liturgical Latinization. In recent years Eastern Catholic Churches have returned to traditional Eastern practices in accord with the 1964 Vatican II decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum. Each church has its own liturgical calendar. Social, moral and cultural issues Catholic social teaching, reflecting the concern Jesus showed for the impoverished, places a heavy emphasis on the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy, namely the support and concern for the sick, the poor and the afflicted. Church teaching calls for a preferential option for the poor while canon law prescribes that "The Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor." Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum novarum which upholds the rights and dignity of labour and the right of workers to form unions. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world. In 2010 the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the church manages 26% of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centres for those with leprosy. The church has always been involved in education, since the founding of the first universities of Europe. It runs and sponsors thousands of primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities throughout the world and operates the world's largest non-governmental school system. Religious institutes for women have played a particularly prominent role in the provision of health and education services, as with orders such as the Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. The Catholic nun Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work among India's poor. Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo won the same award in 1996 for "work towards a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor". The church is also actively engaged in international aid and development through organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Caritas Internationalis, Aid to the Church in Need, refugee advocacy groups such as the Jesuit Refugee Service and community aid groups such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. In the church's teaching, sexual activity should be reserved to married couples without artificial birth control. Marriage is considered the only appropriate context for sexual activity, whether in a sacramental marriage among Christians or in a natural marriage where one or both spouses are unbaptized. Even in romantic relationships, including engagement to marriage, partners are called to abstain from sexual activity, in order to test mutual respect and fidelity. Chastity in marriage requires, in particular, conjugal fidelity and protecting the fecundity of marriage. The couple must foster trust and honesty as well as spiritual and physical intimacy. Sexual activity must always be open to the transmission of new life; the church calls this the procreative significance. It must likewise always bring a couple together in love; the church calls this the unitive significance. Artificial contraception and certain other sexual practices are not permitted, although natural family planning methods are permitted to provide healthy spacing between births, or to postpone children for a just reason. Church teachings about sexuality have become an issue of increasing controversy in the Western world, especially after the close of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, due to changing cultural attitudes described as the sexual revolution. Pope Francis said in 2015 that he was worried that the church has grown "obsessed" with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception, and for prioritizing moral doctrines over helping the poor and marginalized. The Catholic Church also teaches that "homosexual acts" are "contrary to the natural law", "acts of grave depravity" and "under no circumstances can they be approved", but that persons experiencing homosexual tendencies must be accorded respect and dignity. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided... Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. This part of the Catechism was quoted by Pope Francis in a 2013 press interview in which he remarked, when asked about an individual: I think that when you encounter a person like this [the individual he was asked about], you must make a distinction between the fact of a person being gay from the fact of being a lobby, because lobbies, all are not good. That is bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them? This remark and others made in the same interview were seen as a change in the tone, but not in the substance of the teaching of the church, which includes opposition to same-sex marriage. Certain dissenting Catholic groups, such as DignityUSA, oppose the position of the Catholic Church and seek to change it and to educate Catholics on LGBT issues. The Catholic Church has banned all such groups from church property. Orthodox Catholic groups, such as Building Catholic Futures, encourage parishes to incorporate celibate gay people into the church communities. Canon law makes no provision for divorce between baptized individuals, as a valid, consummated sacramental marriage is considered to be a lifelong bond. However, a declaration of nullity may be granted when the proof is produced that essential conditions for contracting a valid marriage were absent from the beginning—in other words, that the marriage was not valid due to some impediment. A declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment, is a judgement on the part of an ecclesiastical tribunal determining that a marriage was invalidly attempted. Marriages among unbaptized individuals may be dissolved with papal permission under certain situations, such as a desire to marry a Catholic, under Pauline or Petrine privilege. An attempt at remarriage following divorce without a declaration of nullity places "the remarried spouse ... in a situation of public and permanent adultery". An innocent spouse who lives in continence following divorce, or couples who live in continence following a civil divorce for a grave cause, do not sin. Worldwide, diocesan tribunals completed over 49000 cases for nullity of marriage in 2006. Over the past 30 years about 55 to 70% of annulments have occurred in the United States. The growth in annulments has been substantial; in the United States, 27,000 marriages were annulled in 2006, compared to 338 in 1968. However, approximately 200,000 married Catholics in the United States divorce each year; 10 million total as of 2006[update].[note 14] Divorce is increasing in some predominantly Catholic countries in Europe. The church teaches that sexual intercourse should only take place between a man and woman who are married to each other, and should be without the use of birth control or contraception. In his encyclical Humanae vitae (1968) Pope Paul VI firmly rejected all artificial contraception, thus contradicting dissenters in the church who saw the birth control pill as an ethically justifiable method of contraception, though he permitted the regulation of births by means of natural family planning (NFP.) This teaching was continued especially by John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where he clarified the church's position on artificial contraception, abortion and euthanasia by condemning them as part of a "culture of death" and calling instead for a "culture of life". Many Western Catholics have voiced significant disagreement with the church's teaching on contraception. Overturning the church's teaching on this point features high on progressive agendas. Catholics for Choice, a political lobbyist group that is not associated with the Catholic Church, stated in 1998 that 96% of American Catholic women had used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that 72% of Catholics believed that one could be a good Catholic without obeying the church's teaching on birth control. Use of natural family planning methods among United States Catholics purportedly is low, although the number cannot be known with certainty.[note 15] As Catholic health providers are among the largest providers of services to patients with HIV/AIDS worldwide, there is significant controversy within and outside the church regarding the use of condoms as a means of limiting new infections, as condom use ordinarily constitutes prohibited contraceptive use. Similarly, the Catholic Church opposes artificial insemination regardless of whether it is homologous (from the husband) or heterologous (from a donor) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying that the artificial process replaces the love and conjugal act between a husband and wife. In addition, it opposes IVF because it might cause disposal of embryos; Catholics believe an embryo is an individual with a soul who must be treated as such. For this reason, the church also opposes abortion. The Catholic Church oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose direct purpose is to destroy a zygote, blastocyst, embryo or fetus, since it holds that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life". However, the Church does recognize as morally legitimate certain acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus. The 1983 Code of Canon Law imposes automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication on Latin Catholics who actually procure an abortion, if they fulfill the conditions for being subject to such a sanction. Due to the anti-abortion stance, some Catholics oppose receiving vaccines derived from fetal cells obtained via abortion. On 21 December 2020, and regarding COVID-19 vaccination, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith emitted a document stating that "it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process" when no alternative vaccine is available, since "the moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger, such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a serious pathological agent." The document states that receiving the vaccine does not constitute endorsement of the practice of abortion, and that "the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good." The document cautions further: Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable. The Catholic Church is committed to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty in any circumstance. The current Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "in the light of the Gospel" the death penalty is "inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person" and that the Catholic Church "works with determination for its abolition worldwide." In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, Francis repeated that the death penalty is "inadmissible" and that "there can be no stepping back from this position". On 9 January 2022 Pope Francis stated in his annual speech to Vatican ambassadors: "The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice, since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims, but only fuels the thirst for vengeance". There is controversy about whether the Catholic Church considers the death penalty intrinsically evil. The American Archbishop José Horacio Gómez and the Catholic philosopher Edward Feser argue that this is a matter of prudential judgement and that the church does not teach this as a de fide statement; others, such as Cardinals Charles Maung Bo and Rino Fisichella, state that it does. The Catholic Church opposes active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide on the grounds that life is a gift from God and should not be prematurely shortened. However, the church allows dying people to refuse extraordinary treatments that would minimally prolong life without hope of recovery. Women and men religious engage in a variety of occupations such as contemplative prayer, teaching, providing health care, and working as missionaries. Catholic women have played diverse roles in the life of the church, with religious institutes providing a formal space for their participation and convents providing spaces for their self-government, prayer and influence through many centuries. Religious sisters and nuns have been extensively involved in developing and running the church's worldwide health and education service networks. Holy Orders are reserved for men. Efforts in support of the ordination of women to the priesthood led to several rulings by the Roman Curia or popes against the proposal, as in Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (1976), Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) and Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994). According to the latest ruling, found in Ordinatio sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II affirmed that the Catholic Church "does not consider herself authorised to admit women to priestly ordination". In defiance of these rulings, independent opposition groups such as Roman Catholic Womenpriests have performed ceremonies they affirm as sacramental ordinations, with, reputedly, an ordaining male Catholic bishop in the first few instances, which, according to canon law, are both illicit and invalid and considered mere simulations of the sacrament of ordination.[note 16] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded by issuing a statement clarifying that any Catholic bishops involved in ordination ceremonies for women, as well as the women themselves if they were Catholic, would automatically receive the penalty of excommunication (latae sententiae, literally "with the sentence already applied", i.e. automatically), citing canon 1378 of canon law and other church laws. From the 1990s the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and other church members has become the subject of civil litigation, criminal prosecution, media coverage and public debate in countries around the world. Many Catholic bishops and other officials had protected priests accused of sexual abuse, and transferred them to other assignments elsewhere, where they continued to commit sex crimes against children. There has been resultant extensive public criticism of the Church. In response to the scandals, formal procedures have been established to help prevent abuse, encourage the reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed their effectiveness. In 2014, Pope Francis instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for the safeguarding of minors. The church has also addressed stewardship of the natural environment, and its relationship to other social and theological teachings. In the document Laudato si', dated 24 May 2015, Pope Francis critiques consumerism and irresponsible development, and laments environmental degradation and climate change. The pope expressed concern that the warming of the planet is a symptom of a greater problem: the developed world's indifference to the destruction of the planet as humans pursue short-term economic gains. See also Notes References NOTE: CCC stands for Catechism of the Catholic Church. The number following CCC is the paragraph number, of which there are 2865. The numbers cited in the Compendium of the CCC are question numbers, of which there are 598. Canon law citations from the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches are labelled "CCEO, Canon xxx", to distinguish from canons of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which are labelled "Canon xxx". Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeuroKit] | [TOKENS: 387] |
Contents NeuroKit NeuroKit ("nk") is an open source toolbox for physiological signal processing. The most recent version, NeuroKit2, is written in Python and is available from the PyPI package repository. As of June 2022, the software was used in 94 scientific publications. NeuroKit2 is presented as one of the most popular and contributor-friendly open-source software for neurophysiology based on the number of downloads, the number of contributors, and other GitHub metricsa. History The first version of NeuroKit was created as a PhD side-project of Dominique Makowski in 2017. It was officially deprecated in 2020 and has been replaced by the current version, NeuroKit2. A few major updates have been released since: NeuroKit has received the 2024 Commendation Award from the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS). Features NeuroKit2 includes tools to work with cardiac activity from electrocardiography (ECG) and photoplethysmography (PPG), electrodermal activity (EDA), respiratory (RSP), electromyography (EMG), and electrooculography (EOG) signals. It enables the computation of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Respiratory Variability (RRV) metrics. It also implements a variety of different algorithms to detect R-peaks and other QRS waves, including an efficient in-house R-peak detector. For neurophysiological signals such as EEG, it supports microstates and frequency band analysis.[citation needed] It also includes a comprehensive set of functions used for fractal physiology, allowing the computation of various measures of complexity (including entropy and fractal dimensions). Design The software was designed to be accessible to users without programming experience, with the possibility of using high-level functions to run entire preprocessing or analysis routines. See also Other open-source toolboxes for analysis of physiological signals include: Notes References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation] | [TOKENS: 9231] |
Contents Irrigation Irrigation is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been developed by many cultures around the world. Irrigation helps to grow crops, maintain landscapes, and revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during times of below-average rainfall. In addition to these uses, irrigation is also employed to protect crops from frost, suppress weed growth in grain fields, and prevent soil consolidation. It is also used to cool livestock, reduce dust, dispose of sewage, and support mining operations. Drainage, which involves the removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given location, is often studied in conjunction with irrigation. Several methods of irrigation differ in how water is supplied to plants. Surface irrigation, also known as gravity irrigation, is the oldest form of irrigation and has been in use for thousands of years. In sprinkler irrigation, water is piped to one or more central locations within the field and distributed by overhead high-pressure water devices. Micro-irrigation is a system that distributes water under low pressure through a piped network and applies it as a small discharge to each plant. Micro-irrigation uses less pressure and water-flow than sprinkler irrigation. Drip irrigation delivers water directly to the root zone of plants. Subirrigation has been used in field crops in areas with high water tables for many years. It involves artificially raising the water table to moisten the soil below the root zone of plants. Irrigation water can come from groundwater (extracted from springs or by using wells), from surface water (withdrawn from rivers, lakes or reservoirs) or from non-conventional sources like treated wastewater, desalinated water, drainage water, or fog collection. Irrigation can be supplementary to rainfall, which is common in many parts of the world as rainfed agriculture, or it can be full irrigation, where crops rarely rely on any contribution from rainfall. Full irrigation is less common and only occurs in arid landscapes with very low rainfall or when crops are grown in semi-arid areas outside of rainy seasons. The environmental effects of irrigation relate to the changes in quantity and quality of soil and water as a result of irrigation and the subsequent effects on natural and social conditions in river basins and downstream of an irrigation scheme. The effects stem from the altered hydrological conditions caused by the installation and operation of the irrigation scheme. Amongst some of these problems is depletion of underground aquifers through overdrafting. Soil can be over-irrigated due to poor distribution uniformity or management wastes water, chemicals, and may lead to water pollution. Over-irrigation can cause deep drainage from rising water tables that can lead to problems of irrigation salinity requiring watertable control by some form of subsurface land drainage. Extent In 2000, the total fertile land was 2,788,000 km2 (689 million acres), and it was equipped with irrigation infrastructure worldwide. Roughly 68% of this area is in Asia, 17% in the Americas, 9% in Europe, 5% in Africa and 1% in Oceania. The largest contiguous areas of high irrigation density are found in Northern and Eastern India and Pakistan along the Ganges and Indus rivers; in the Hai He, Huang He and Yangtze basins in China; along the Nile river in Egypt and Sudan; and in the Mississippi-Missouri river basin, the Southern Great Plains, and in parts of California in the United States. Smaller irrigation areas are spread across almost all populated parts of the world. By 2012, the area of irrigated land had increased to an estimated total of 3,242,917 km2 (801 million acres), which is nearly the size of India. The irrigation of 20% of farming land accounts for the production of 40% of food production. The scale of irrigation increased dramatically over the 20th century. In 1800, 8 million hectares globally were irrigated, in 1950, 94 million hectares, and in 1990, 235 million hectares. By 1990, 30% of the global food production came from irrigated land. Irrigation techniques across the globe include canals redirecting surface water, groundwater pumping, and diverting water from dams. National governments lead most irrigation schemes within their borders, but private investors and other nations, especially the United States, China, and European countries like the United Kingdom, also fund and organize some schemes within other nations. By 2021 the global land area equipped for irrigation reached 352 million ha, an increase of 22% from the 289 million ha of 2000 and more than twice the 1960s land area equipped for irrigation. The vast majority is located in Asia (70%), where irrigation was a key component of the green revolution; the Americas account for 16% and Europe for 8% of the world total. India (76 million ha) and China (75 million ha) have the largest equipped area for irrigation, far ahead of the United States of America (27 million ha). China and India also have the largest net gains in equipped area between 2000 and 2020 (+21 million ha for China and +15 million ha for India). All the regions saw increases in the area equipped for irrigation, with Africa growing the fastest (+29%), followed by Asia (+25%), Oceania (+24%), the Americas (+19%) and Europe (+2%). Irrigation enables the production of more crops, especially commodity crops in areas which otherwise could not support them. Countries frequently invested in irrigation to increase wheat, rice, or cotton production, often with the overarching goal of increasing self-sufficiency. Water sources Irrigation water can come from groundwater (extracted from springs or by using wells), from surface water (withdrawn from rivers, lakes or reservoirs) or from non-conventional sources like treated wastewater, desalinated water, drainage water, or fog collection. While floodwater harvesting belongs to the accepted irrigation methods, rainwater harvesting is usually not considered as a form of irrigation. Rainwater harvesting is the collection of runoff water from roofs or unused land and the concentration of this. Irrigation with recycled municipal wastewater can also serve to fertilize plants if it contains nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. There are benefits of using recycled water for irrigation, including the lower cost compared to some other sources and consistency of supply regardless of season, climatic conditions and associated water restrictions. When reclaimed water is used for irrigation in agriculture, the nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) content of the treated wastewater has the benefit of acting as a fertilizer. This can make the reuse of excreta contained in sewage attractive. The irrigation water can be used in different ways on different crops, such as for food crops to be eaten raw or for crops which are intended for human consumption to be eaten raw or unprocessed. For processed food crops: crops which are intended for human consumption not to be eaten raw but after food processing (i.e. cooked, industrially processed). It can also be used on crops which are not intended for human consumption (e.g. pastures, forage, fiber, ornamental, seed, forest and turf crops). In developing countries, agriculture is increasingly using untreated municipal wastewater for irrigation – often in an unsafe manner. Cities provide lucrative markets for fresh produce, so they are attractive to farmers. However, because agriculture has to compete for increasingly scarce water resources with industry and municipal users, there is often no alternative for farmers but to use water polluted with urban waste directly to water their crops. There can be significant health hazards related to using untreated wastewater in agriculture. Municipal wastewater can contain a mixture of chemical and biological pollutants. In low-income countries, there are often high levels of pathogens from excreta. In emerging nations, where industrial development is outpacing environmental regulation, there are increasing risks from inorganic and organic chemicals. The World Health Organization developed guidelines for safe use of wastewater in 2006, advocating a 'multiple-barrier' approach wastewater use, for example by encouraging farmers to adopt various risk-reducing behaviors. These include ceasing irrigation a few days before harvesting to allow pathogens to die off in the sunlight; applying water carefully so it does not contaminate leaves likely to be eaten raw; cleaning vegetables with disinfectant; or allowing fecal sludge used in farming to dry before being used as a human manure. Drawbacks or risks often mentioned include the content of potentially harmful substances such as bacteria, heavy metals, or organic pollutants (including pharmaceuticals, personal care products and pesticides). Irrigation with wastewater can have both positive and negative effects on soil and plants, depending on the composition of the wastewater and on the soil or plant characteristics. Irrigation water can also come from non-conventional sources like treated wastewater, desalinated water, drainage water, or fog collection. In countries where humid air sweeps through at night, water can be obtained by condensation onto cold surfaces. This is practiced in the vineyards at Lanzarote using stones to condense water. Fog collectors are also made of canvas or foil sheets. Using condensate from air conditioning units as a water source is also becoming more popular in large urban areas. As of November 2019[update] a Glasgow-based startup has helped a farmer in Scotland to establish edible saltmarsh crops irrigated with sea water. An acre of previously marginal land has been put under cultivation to grow samphire, sea blite, and sea aster; these plants yield a higher profit than potatoes. The land is flood irrigated twice a day to simulate tidal flooding; the water is pumped from the sea using wind power. Additional benefits are soil remediation and carbon sequestration. Until the 1960s, there were fewer than half the number of people on the planet as of 2024. People were not as wealthy as today, consumed fewer calories and ate less meat, so less water was needed to produce their food. They required a third of the volume of water humans presently take from rivers. Today, the competition for water resources is much more intense, because there are now more than seven billion people on the planet, increasing the likelihood of overconsumption of food produced by water-thirsty animal agriculture and intensive farming practices. This creates increasing competition for water from industry, urbanisation and biofuel crops. Farmers will have to strive to increase productivity to meet growing demands for food, while industry and cities find ways to use water more efficiently. Successful agriculture is dependent upon farmers having sufficient access to water. However, water scarcity is already a critical constraint to farming in many parts of the world. Irrigation methods There are several methods of irrigation. They vary in how the water is supplied to the plants. The goal is to apply the water to the plants as uniformly as possible, so that each plant has the amount of water it needs, neither too much nor too little. Irrigation can also be understood whether it is supplementary to rainfall, as happens in many parts of the world, or whether it is 'full irrigation, whereby crops rarely depend on any contribution from rainfall. Full irrigation is less common and only happens in arid landscapes experiencing very low rainfall or when crops are grown in semi-arid areas outside of any rainy seasons. Surface irrigation, also known as gravity irrigation, is the oldest form of irrigation and has been in use for thousands of years. In surface (furrow, flood, or level basin) irrigation systems, water moves across the surface of agricultural lands to wet it and infiltrate into the soil. Water moves by following gravity or the slope of the land. Surface irrigation can be subdivided into furrow, border strip or basin irrigation. It is often called flood irrigation when the irrigation results in flooding or near flooding of the cultivated land. Historically, surface irrigation is the most common method of irrigating agricultural land across most parts of the world. The water application efficiency of surface irrigation is typically lower than other forms of irrigation, due in part to the lack of control of applied depths. Surface irrigation involves a significantly lower capital cost and energy requirement than pressurized irrigation systems. Hence, it is often the irrigation choice for developing nations, for low-value crops and for large fields. Where water levels from the irrigation source permit, the levels are controlled by dikes (levees), usually plugged by soil. This is often seen in terraced rice fields (rice paddies), where the method is used to flood or control the level of water in each distinct field. In some cases, the water is pumped or lifted by human or animal power to the level of the land. Surface irrigation is even used to water urban gardens in certain areas, for example, in and around Phoenix, Arizona. The irrigated area is surrounded by a berm and the water is delivered according to a schedule set by a local irrigation district. A special form of irrigation using surface water is spate irrigation, also called floodwater harvesting. In case of a flood (spate), water is diverted to normally dry river beds (wadis) using a network of dams, gates and channels and spread over large areas. The moisture stored in the soil will be used thereafter to grow crops. Spate irrigation areas are in particular located in semi-arid or arid, mountainous regions. Micro-irrigation, sometimes called localized irrigation, low volume irrigation, or trickle irrigation is a system where water is distributed under low pressure through a piped network, in a pre-determined pattern, and applied as a small discharge to each plant or adjacent to it. Traditional drip irrigation use individual emitters, subsurface drip irrigation (SDI), micro-spray or micro-sprinklers, and mini-bubbler irrigation all belong to this category of irrigation methods. Drip irrigation, also known as microirrigation or trickle irrigation, functions as its name suggests. In this system, water is delivered at or near the root zone of plants, one drop at a time. This method can be the most water-efficient method of irrigation, if managed properly; evaporation and runoff are minimized. The field water efficiency of drip irrigation is typically in the range of 80 to 90% when managed correctly. In modern agriculture, drip irrigation is often combined with plastic mulch, further reducing evaporation, and is also the means of delivery of fertilizer. The process is known as fertigation. Deep percolation, where water moves below the root zone, can occur if a drip system is operated for too long or if the delivery rate is too high. Drip irrigation methods range from very high-tech and computerized to low-tech and labour-intensive. Lower water pressures are usually needed than for most other types of systems, except for low-energy center pivot systems and surface irrigation systems, and the system can be designed for uniformity throughout a field or for precise water delivery to individual plants in a landscape containing a mix of plant species. Although it is difficult to regulate pressure on steep slopes, pressure compensating emitters are available, so the field does not have to be level. High-tech solutions involve precisely calibrated emitters located along lines of tubing that extend from a computerized set of valves. In sprinkler or overhead irrigation, water is piped to one or more central locations within the field and distributed by overhead high-pressure sprinklers or guns. A system using sprinklers, sprays, or guns mounted overhead on permanently installed risers is often referred to as a solid-set irrigation system. Higher pressure sprinklers that rotate are called rotors and are driven by a ball drive, gear drive, or impact mechanism. Rotors can be designed to rotate in a full or partial circle. Guns are similar to rotors, except that they generally operate at very high pressures of 275 to 900 kPa (39.9 to 130.5 psi) and flows of 3 to 76 L/s (50 to 1200 US gal/min), usually with nozzle diameters in the range of 10 to 50 mm (0.39 to 1.97 in). Guns are used not only for irrigation, but also for industrial applications such as dust suppression and logging. Sprinklers can also be mounted on moving platforms connected to the water source by a hose. Automatically moving wheeled systems known as traveling sprinklers may irrigate areas such as small farms, sports fields, parks, pastures, and cemeteries unattended. Most of these use a length of polyethylene tubing wound on a steel drum. As the tubing is wound on the drum powered by the irrigation water or a small gas engine, the sprinkler is pulled across the field. When the sprinkler arrives back at the reel the system shuts off. This type of system is known to most people as a "water reel" travelling irrigation sprinkler, and they are used extensively for dust suppression, irrigation, and land application of wastewater. Other travellers use a flat rubber hose that is dragged along behind while the sprinkler platform is pulled by a cable. Center pivot irrigation is a form of sprinkler irrigation utilising several segments of pipe (usually galvanized steel or aluminium) joined and supported by trusses, mounted on wheeled towers with sprinklers positioned along its length. The system moves in a circular pattern and is fed with water from the pivot point at the center of the arc. These systems are found and used in all parts of the world and allow irrigation of all types of terrain. Newer systems have drop sprinkler heads. As of 2017[update] most center pivot systems have drops hanging from a U-shaped pipe attached at the top of the pipe with sprinkler heads that are positioned a few feet (at most) above the crop, thus limiting evaporative losses. Drops can also be used with drag hoses or bubblers that deposit the water directly on the ground between crops. Crops are often planted in a circle to conform to the center pivot. This type of system is known as LEPA (Low Energy Precision Application). Originally, most center pivots were water-powered. These were replaced by hydraulic systems (T-L Irrigation) and electric-motor-driven systems (Reinke, Valley, Zimmatic). Many modern pivots feature GPS devices. A series of pipes, each with a wheel of about 1.5 m diameter permanently affixed to its midpoint, and sprinklers along its length, are coupled together. Water is supplied at one end using a large hose. After sufficient irrigation has been applied to one strip of the field, the hose is removed, the water drained from the system, and the assembly rolled either by hand or with a purpose-built mechanism, so that the sprinklers are moved to a different position across the field. The hose is reconnected. The process is repeated in a pattern until the whole field has been irrigated. This system is less expensive to install than a center pivot, but much more labor-intensive to operate – it does not travel automatically across the field: it applies water in a stationary strip, must be drained, and then rolled to a new strip. Most systems use 100 or 130 mm (3.9 or 5.1 in) diameter aluminum pipe. The pipe doubles both as water transport and as an axle for rotating all the wheels. A drive system (often found near the centre of the wheel line) rotates the clamped-together pipe sections as a single axle, rolling the whole wheel line. Manual adjustment of individual wheel positions may be necessary if the system becomes misaligned. Wheel line systems are limited in the amount of water they can carry, and limited in the height of crops that can be irrigated. One useful feature of a lateral move system is that it consists of sections that can be easily disconnected, adapting to field shape as the line is moved. They are most often used for small, rectilinear, or oddly-shaped fields, hilly or mountainous regions, or in regions where labor is inexpensive. Subirrigation has been used for many years in field crops in areas with high water tables. It is a method of artificially raising the water table to allow the soil to be moistened from below the plants' root zone. Often those systems are located on permanent grasslands in lowlands or river valleys and combined with drainage infrastructure. A system of pumping stations, canals, weirs and gates allows it to increase or decrease the water level in a network of ditches and thereby control the water table. Subirrigation is also used in the commercial greenhouse production, usually for potted plants. Water is delivered from below, absorbed by upwards, and the excess collected for recycling. Typically, a solution of water and nutrients floods a container or flows through a trough for a short period, 10–20 minutes, and is then pumped back into a holding tank for reuse. Sub-irrigation in greenhouses requires fairly sophisticated, expensive equipment and management. Advantages are water and nutrient conservation, and labor savings through reduced system maintenance and automation. It is similar in principle and action to subsurface basin irrigation. Another type of subirrigation is the self-watering container, also known as a sub-irrigated planter. This consists of a planter suspended over a reservoir with some type of wicking material, such as a polyester rope. The water is drawn up the wick through capillary action. A similar technique is the wicking bed; this too uses capillary action. Efficiency Modern irrigation methods are efficient enough to supply the entire field uniformly with water, so that each plant has the amount of water it needs, neither too much nor too little. Water use efficiency in the field can be determined as follows: Increased irrigation efficiency has a number of positive outcomes for the farmer, the community and the wider environment. Low application efficiency infers that the amount of water applied to the field is in excess of the crop or field requirements. Increasing the application efficiency means that the amount of crop produced per unit of water increases. Improved efficiency may be achieved by applying less water to an existing field or by using water more wisely, thereby achieving higher yields in the same area of land. In some parts of the world, farmers are charged for irrigation water, hence over-application has a direct financial cost to the farmer. Irrigation often requires pumping energy (either electricity or fossil fuel) to deliver water to the field or supply the correct operating pressure. Hence, increased efficiency will reduce both the water cost and energy cost per unit of agricultural production. A reduction of water use on one field may mean that the farmer is able to irrigate a larger area of land, increasing total agricultural production. Low efficiency usually means that excess water is lost through seepage or runoff, both of which can result in loss of crop nutrients or pesticides with potential adverse impacts on the surrounding environment. Improving the efficiency of irrigation is usually achieved in one of two ways: either by improving the system design or by optimizing the irrigation management. Improving system design includes conversion from one form of irrigation to another (e.g. from furrow to drip irrigation) and also through small changes in the current system (for example, changing flow rates and operating pressures). Irrigation management refers to the scheduling of irrigation events and decisions around how much water is applied. Garden irrigation Domestic gardens and landscaped areas around public buildings are often installed with irrigation of some type in dry climates. In Australia, small garden sprinklers attached to a hose became a common form of irrigation, often regulated by a timer. In the 1960s, Hugall & Hoile, a small company in Perth, Western Australia, invented a system which they called "reticulation",[a] by which a garden's irrigation system was divided into segments, with solenoids (electronic valves) connected to a mechanical timer. The system became highly popular, and within 20 years, around half of all homes in Perth had automated sprinkler systems. Robert Hugall made a name for himself as "the father of backyard irrigation", while former Australian cricketer Wally Edwards (who founded Holman Industries in 1966) later targeted the DIY market in garden watering systems in the early 1990s; both men grew rich from their companies. As climate change is causing hotter, drier weather on both sides of the continent, newer systems of drip irrigation that use less water have been developed. In addition desalination plants have been built or recommissioned in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane, to meet the growing need for more water to keep plants and, especially, the tree canopy, growing. Challenges Negative impacts frequently accompany extensive irrigation. Some projects which diverted surface water for irrigation dried up the water sources, which led to a more extreme regional climate. Projects that relied on groundwater and pumped too much from underground aquifers created subsidence and salinization. Salinization of irrigation water in turn damaged the crops and seeped into drinking water. Pests and pathogens also thrived in the irrigation canals or ponds full of still water, which created regional outbreaks of diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis. Governments also used irrigation schemes to encourage migration, especially of more desirable populations into an area. Additionally, some of these large nationwide schemes failed to pay off at all, costing more than any benefit gained from increased crop yields. Overdrafting (depletion) of underground aquifers: In the mid-20th century, the advent of diesel and electric motors led to systems that could pump groundwater out of major aquifers faster than drainage basins could refill them. This can lead to permanent loss of aquifer capacity, decreased water quality, ground subsidence, and other problems. The future of food production in such areas as the North China Plain, the Punjab region in India and Pakistan, and the Great Plains of the US is threatened by this phenomenon. Irrigation schemes involve solving numerous engineering and economic problems while minimizing negative environmental consequences. Such problems include: History Archaeological investigation has found evidence of irrigation in areas lacking sufficient natural rainfall to support crops for rainfed agriculture. Some of the earliest known use of the technology dates to the 6th millennium BCE in Khuzistan in the south-west of Iran. The site of Choga Mami, in present-day Iraq on the border with Iran, is believed to be the earliest to show the first canal irrigation in operation at about 6000 BCE. Irrigation was used as a means of manipulating water in the alluvial plains of the Indus Valley Civilization, the application of which is estimated to have begun around 4500 BCE and drastically increased the size and prosperity of their agricultural settlements. The Indus Valley Civilization developed sophisticated irrigation and water-storage systems, including artificial reservoirs at Girnar dated to 3000 BCE, and an early canal irrigation system from c. 2600 BCE. Large-scale agriculture was practiced, with an extensive network of canals used for the purpose of irrigation. Farmers in the Mesopotamian plain used irrigation from at least the third-millennium BCE. They developed perennial irrigation, regularly watering crops throughout the growing season by coaxing water through a matrix of small channels formed in the field. Ancient Egyptians practiced basin irrigation using the flooding of the Nile to inundate land plots which had been surrounded by dikes. The flood water remained until the fertile sediment had settled before the engineers returned the surplus to the watercourse. There is evidence of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhet III in the twelfth dynasty (about 1800 BCE) using the natural lake of the Faiyum Oasis as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during dry seasons. The lake swelled annually from the flooding of the Nile. The Ancient Nubians developed a form of irrigation by using a waterwheel-like device called a sakia. Irrigation began in Nubia between the third and second millennia BCE. It largely depended upon the flood waters that would flow through the Nile River and other rivers in what is now the Sudan. In sub-Saharan Africa, irrigation reached the Niger River region cultures and civilizations by the first or second millennium BCE and was based on wet-season flooding and water harvesting. Evidence of terrace irrigation occurs in pre-Columbian America, early Syria, India, and China. In the Zana Valley of the Andes Mountains in Peru, archaeologists have found remains of three irrigation canals radiocarbon-dated from the 4th millennium BCE, the 3rd millennium BCE and the 9th century CE. These canals provide the earliest record of irrigation in the New World. Traces of a canal possibly dating from the 5th millennium BCE were found under the 4th-millennium canal. Ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) used irrigation as far back as the 6th millennium BCE to grow barley in areas with insufficient natural rainfall. The Qanats, developed in ancient Persia about 800 BCE, are among the oldest known irrigation methods still in use today. They are now found in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. The system comprises a network of vertical wells and gently sloping tunnels driven into the sides of cliffs and steep hills to tap groundwater. The noria, a water wheel with clay pots around the rim powered by the flow of the stream (or by animals where the water source was still), first came into use at about this time among Roman settlers in North Africa. By 150 BCE, the pots were fitted with valves to allow smoother filling as they were forced into the water. The irrigation works of ancient Sri Lanka, the earliest dating from about 300 BCE in the reign of King Pandukabhaya, and under continuous development for the next thousand years, were one of the most complex irrigation systems of the ancient world. They included underground canals and artificial reservoirs to store water. These reservoirs and canal systems were used primarily to irrigate paddy fields, which require a lot of water to cultivate. Most of these irrigation systems still exist undamaged up to now, in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, because of the advanced and precise engineering. The system was extensively restored and further extended during the reign of King Parakrama Bahu (1153–1186 CE). The oldest known hydraulic engineers of China were Sunshu Ao (6th century BCE) of the Spring and Autumn period and Ximen Bao (5th century BCE) of the Warring States period, both of whom worked on large irrigation projects. In the Sichuan region belonging to the state of Qin of ancient China, the Dujiangyan Irrigation System devised by the Qin Chinese hydrologist and irrigation engineer Li Bing was built in 256 BCE to irrigate a vast area of farmland that today still supplies water. By the 2nd century CE, during the Han dynasty, the Chinese also used chain pumps which lifted water from a lower elevation to a higher one. These were powered by manual foot-pedal, hydraulic waterwheels, or rotating mechanical wheels pulled by oxen. The water was used for public works, providing water for urban residential quarters and palace gardens, but mostly for irrigation of farmland canals and channels in the fields. Korea, Chang Yŏngsil, also known as Jang Yeong-sil, a Korean engineer of the Joseon dynasty, under the active direction of the king, Sejong the Great, invented the world's first rain gauge, uryanggye (Korean: 우량계) in 1441. It was installed in irrigation tanks as part of a nationwide system to measure and collect rainfall for agricultural applications. Planners and farmers could better use the information gathered in the[which?] survey with this instrument. The earliest agricultural irrigation canal system known in the area of the present-day United States dates to between 1200 BCE and 800 BCE and was discovered by Desert Archaeology, Inc. in Marana, Arizona (adjacent to Tucson) in 2009. The irrigation-canal system predates the Hohokam culture by two thousand years and belongs to an unidentified culture. In North America, the Hohokam were the only culture known to rely on irrigation canals to water their crops, and their irrigation systems supported the largest population in the Southwest by CE 1300. The Hohokam constructed various simple canals combined with weirs in their various agricultural pursuits. Between the 7th and 14th centuries, they built and maintained extensive irrigation networks along the lower Salt and middle Gila Rivers that rivaled the complexity of those used in the ancient Near East, Egypt, and China. These were constructed using relatively simple excavation tools, without the benefit of advanced engineering technologies, and achieved drops of a few feet per mile, balancing erosion and siltation. The Hohokam cultivated cotton, tobacco, maize, beans, and squash varieties and harvested an assortment of wild plants. Late in the Hohokam Chronological Sequence, they used extensive dry-farming systems, primarily to grow agave for food and fiber. Their reliance on agricultural strategies based on canal irrigation, vital in their less-than-hospitable desert environment and arid climate, provided the basis for the aggregation of rural populations into stable urban centers. The oldest known irrigation canals in the Americas are in the desert of northern Peru in the Zaña Valley near the hamlet of Nanchoc. The canals have been radiocarbon dated to at least 3400 BCE and possibly as old as 4700 BCE. The canals at that time irrigated crops such as peanuts, squash, manioc, chenopods, a relative of Quinoa, and later maize. The scale of global irrigation increased dramatically over the 20th century. In 1800, 8 million hectares were irrigated; in 1950, 94 million hectares, and in 1990, 235 million hectares. By 1990, 30% of the global food production came from irrigated land. Irrigation techniques across the globe included canals redirecting surface water, groundwater pumping, and diverting water from dams. National governments led most irrigation schemes within their borders, but private investors and other nations, especially the United States, China, and European countries like the United Kingdom, funded and organized some schemes within other nations. Irrigation enabled the production of more crops, especially commodity crops in areas that otherwise could not support them. Countries frequently invested in irrigation to increase wheat, rice, or cotton production, often with the overarching goal of increasing self-sufficiency. In the 20th century, global anxiety, specifically about the American cotton monopoly, fueled many empirical irrigation projects: Britain began developing irrigation in India, the Ottomans in Egypt, the French in Algeria, the Portuguese in Angola, the Germans in Togo, and Soviets in Central Asia. Negative impacts frequently accompany extensive irrigation. Some projects that diverted surface water for irrigation dried up the water sources, which led to a more extreme regional climate. Projects that relied on groundwater and pumped too much from underground aquifers created subsidence and salinization. Salinization of irrigation water damaged the crops and seeped into drinking water. Pests and pathogens also thrived in the irrigation canals or ponds full of still water, which created regional outbreaks of diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis. Governments also used irrigation schemes to encourage migration, especially of more desirable populations into an area. Additionally, some of these large nationwide schemes failed to pay off at all, costing more than any benefit gained from increased crop yields. Irrigated land in the United States increased from 300,000 acres in 1880 to 4.1 million in 1890 to 7.3 million in 1900. Two thirds of this irrigation sources from groundwater or small ponds and reservoirs, while the other one third comes from large dams. One of the main attractions of irrigation in the West was its increased dependability compared to rainfall-watered agriculture in the East. Proponents argued that farmers with a dependable water supply could more easily get loans from bankers interested in this more predictable farming model. Most irrigation in the Great Plains region derived from underground aquifers. Euro-American farmers who colonized the region in the 19th century tried to grow the commodity crops that they were used to, like wheat, corn, and alfalfa, but rainfall stifled their growing capacity. Between the late 1800s and the 1930s, farmers used wind-powered pumps to draw groundwater. These windpumps had limited power, but the development of gas-powered pumps in the mid-1930s pushed wells deep into the Ogallala Aquifer. Farmers irrigated fields by laying pipes across the field with sprinklers at intervals, a labor-intensive process, until the advent of the center-pivot sprinkler after World War II, which made irrigation significantly easier. By the 1970s farmers drained the aquifer ten times faster than it could recharge, and by 1993 they had removed half of the accessible water. Large-scale federal funding and intervention pushed through the majority of irrigation projects in the West, especially in California, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada. At first, plans to increase irrigated farmland, largely by giving land to farmers and asking them to find water, failed across the board. Congress passed the Desert Land Act in 1877 and the Carey Act in 1894, which only marginally increased irrigation. Only in 1902 did Congress pass the National Reclamation Act, which channeled money from the sale of western public lands, in parcels up to 160 acres large, into irrigation projects on public or private land in the arid West. The Congressmen who passed the law and their wealthy supporters supported Western irrigation because it would increase American exports, 'reclaim' the West, and push the Eastern poor out West for a better life. While the National Reclamation Act was the most successful piece of federal irrigation legislation, the implementation of the act did not go as planned. The Reclamation Service chose to push most of the Act's money toward construction rather than settlement, so the Service overwhelmingly prioritized building large dams like the Hoover Dam. Over the 20th century, Congress and state governments grew more frustrated with the Reclamation Service and the irrigation schemes. Frederick Newell, head of the Reclamation Service, proving uncompromising and challenging to work with, falling crop prices, resistance to delay debt payments, and refusal to begin new projects until the completion of old ones all contributed. The Reclamation Extension Act of 1914, transferring a significant amount of irrigation decision-making power regarding irrigation projects from the Reclamation Service to Congress, was in many ways a result of increasing political unpopularity of the Reclamation Service. In the lower Colorado Basin of Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada, the states derive irrigation water largely from rivers, especially the Colorado River, which irrigates more than 4.5 million acres of land, with a less significant amount coming from groundwater. In the 1952 case Arizona v. California, Arizona sued California for increased access to the Colorado River, under the grounds that their groundwater supply could not sustain their almost entirely irrigation-based agricultural economy, which they won. California, which began irrigating in earnest in the 1870s in San Joaquin Valley, had passed the Wright Act of 1887 permitting agricultural communities to construct and operate needed irrigation works. The Colorado River also irrigates large fields in California's Imperial Valley, fed by the National Reclamation Act-built All-American Canal. When the Bolsheviks conquered Central Asia in 1917, the native Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Turkmens used minimal irrigation. The Slavic immigrants pushed into the area by the Tsarist government brought their irrigation methods, including waterwheels, the use of rice paddies to restore salted land, and underground irrigation channels. Russians dismissed these techniques as crude and inefficient. Despite this, tsarist officials maintained these systems through the late 19th century without other solutions. Before conquering the area, the Russian government accepted a 1911 American proposal to send hydraulic experts to Central Asia to investigate the potential for large-scale irrigation. A 1918 decree by Lenin then encouraged irrigation development in the region, which began in the 1930s. When it did, Stalin and other Soviet leaders prioritized large-scale, ambitious hydraulic projects, especially along the Volga River. The Soviet irrigation push stemmed mainly from their late 19th century fears of the American cotton monopoly and subsequent desire to achieve cotton self-sufficiency. They had built up their textile manufacturing industry in the 19th century, requiring increased cotton and irrigation, as the region did not receive enough rainfall to support cotton farming. The Russians built dams on the Don and Kuban Rivers for irrigation, removing freshwater flow from the Sea of Azov and making it much saltier. Depletion and salinization scourged other areas of the Russian irrigation project. In the 1950s, Soviet officials began also diverting the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, which fed the Aral Sea. Before diversion, the rivers delivered 55 cubic kilometres (13 cu mi) of water to the Aral Sea per year, but after, they only delivered 6 cubic kilometres (1.4 cu mi). Because of its reduced inflow, the Aral Sea covered less than half of its original seabed, which made the regional climate more extreme and created airborne salinization, lowering nearby crop yields. By 1975, the USSR used eight times as much water as they had in 1913, mostly for irrigation. Russia's expansion of irrigation began to decrease in the late 1980s, and irrigated hectares in Central Asia capped out at 7 million. Mikhail Gorbachev killed a proposed plan to reverse the Ob and Yenisei for irrigation in 1986, and the breakup of the USSR in 1991 ended Russian investment in Central Asian cotton irrigation. Different irrigation schemes with various goals and success rates have been implemented across Africa in the 20th century but have all been influenced by colonial forces. The Tana River Irrigation Scheme in eastern Kenya, completed between 1948 and 1963, opened up new lands for agriculture. The Kenyan government attempted to resettle the area with detainees from the Mau Mau uprising. Italian oil drillers discovered Libya's underground water resources during the Italian colonization of Libya. This water lay dormant until 1969, when Muammar al-Gaddafi and American Armand Hammer built the Great Man-Made River to deliver the Saharan water to the coast. The water largely contributed to irrigation but cost four to ten times more than the crops it produced were worth. In 1912, the Union of South Africa created an irrigation department and began investing in water storage infrastructure and irrigation. The government used irrigation and dam-building to further social goals like poverty relief by creating construction jobs for poor whites and irrigation schemes to increase white farming. One of their first significant irrigation projects was the Hartbeespoort Dam, begun in 1916 to elevate the living conditions of the 'poor whites' in the region and eventually completed as a 'whites only' employment opportunity. The Pretoria irrigation scheme, Kammanassie project, and Buchuberg irrigation scheme on the Orange River all followed in the same vein in the 1920s and 30s. In Egypt, modern irrigation began with Muhammad Ali Pasha in the mid-1800s, who sought to achieve Egyptian independence from the Ottomans through increased trade with Europe—specifically cotton exportation. His administration proposed replacing the traditional Nile basin irrigation, which took advantage of the annual ebb and flow of the Nile, with irrigation barrages in the lower Nile, which better suited cotton production. Egypt devoted 105,000 ha to cotton in 1861, which increased fivefold by 1865. Most of their exports were shipped to England, and the United States Civil War-induced cotton scarcity in the 1860s cemented Egypt as England's cotton producer. As the Egyptian economy became more dependent on cotton in the 20th century, controlling even small Nile floods became more important. Cotton production was more at risk of destruction than more common crops like barley or wheat. After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the British intensified the conversion to perennial irrigation with the construction of the Delta Barrage, the Assiut Barrage, and the first Aswan Dam. Perennial irrigation decreased local control over water and made traditional subsistence farming or the farming of other crops incredibly difficult, eventually contributing to widespread peasant bankruptcy and the 1879-1882 'Urabi revolt. Examples by country See the below template: (Link to a similar template for mobile users.) Gallery See also Footnotes References Sources This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2023, FAO, FAO. External links |
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Contents Hiroshi Yamauchi Hiroshi Yamauchi (Japanese: 山内 溥; 7 November 1927 – 19 September 2013) was the third president of Nintendo, serving in the role from 25 April 1949 to 24 May 2002, and principal owner of the Seattle Mariners from 1992 until his death. Before joining Nintendo, he had strong familial connections; his great-grandfather, Fusajiro Yamauchi, founded the company, and was its first president, and his grandfather, Sekiryo Kaneda, was its second president. During his tenure, Nintendo was transformed from a Japanese manufacturer of hanafuda into a global conglomerate largely focused on manufacturing video game consoles and publishing video games. On the basis of this success, and his ownership of most of Nintendo's shares, he became considerably wealthy. In 2008, he was Japan's wealthiest person, with an estimated net worth of $7.8 billion. Even in 2013, with this figure having declined to $2.1 billion, he was the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest in the world. Early life Yamauchi was born in Kyoto to Shikanojo Inaba and Kimi. When he was five, his father abandoned his family; his mother, unable to cope, gave up custody to her parents, including Sekiryo Kaneda, president of Nintendo. He was sent to a preparatory school in Kyoto at age twelve, and worked in a military factory during World War II, his plans to study law or engineering disrupted. After the end of the war, he studied law at Waseda University, and married Michiko Inaba. With the absence of Yamauchi's father, his grandparents met to arrange the marriage.[unreliable source?] Nintendo career In 1948, while Yamauchi was at Waseda University, Kaneda suffered a stroke. As he lacked a designated successor as president of Nintendo, Yamauchi was asked to replace him immediately. Yamauchi agreed on the condition that he be the only family member at Nintendo; subsequently, his older cousin was fired. Due to his age and lack of management experience, Yamauchi was resented by most employees, and not taken seriously. This perception was challenged when he responded to a factory strike by firing long-time employees who questioned his authority. Yamauchi led Nintendo, which he renamed Nintendo Karuta and moved elsewhere in Kyoto, in what was called a "notoriously imperialistic style" by video game journalist Steven L. Kent. He was the sole judge of potential new products, and he only approved those which appealed to him and his instincts. Yamauchi introduced Western (plastic-backed) playing cards to Japan, achieving success in 1959, with the release of a pack of officially licensed cards featuring Disney characters, accompanied by a booklet explaining different card games. That their association with gambling, technically illegal in Japan, had limited the popularity of Western-style cards did not stop the sale of 600,000 packs within a year, helping Nintendo to dominate the Japanese playing card market. Yamauchi took Nintendo, renamed Nintendo Company Limited, public, becoming the first chairman of the board. Convinced by a visit to the small headquarters of the United States Playing Card Company, the world's biggest manufacturer of playing cards, that Nintendo would struggle to grow if it remained on this path, he took steps to diversify the company. Nintendo's ventures, including an instant rice product, and ownership of a taxi company called Daiya, failed, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Fortunes changed in 1966, with the release of the Ultra Hand, a toy based on an extendable claw which Gunpei Yokoi, a factory engineer, was seen by Yamauchi to be playing with during a break. Relying on Nintendo's pre-existing distribution networks, Yamauchi decided to move into the toy industry. Yokoi was transferred to a new department called Games and Setup, and tasked with developing more toys. Among the products which established Nintendo as a toymaker were the Love Tester, an electronic toy which allegedly determined the strength of romantic relationships, and a light gun using solar cells for targets. Many of Nintendo's toys included electronic components. Noticing the combination of technological developments and decreasing prices, and the rise of arcade games and video game consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey, Yamauchi realized that electronics could become foundational to Nintendo's products, as opposed to a novelty. Nintendo became the Japanese distributor of the Odyssey, and established Nintendo Research & Development Department, a unit dedicated to the development of video games. By the end of the 1970s, a second unit had been established, with employees hired from Sharp Electronics to develop the Color TV-Game 6, Nintendo's first console. The separation, deemed unique by researcher Steven Boyer, lead to competition, and, in turn, innovation. Games like Radar Scope, Space Fever, and Sheriff began appearing in arcades, though they achieved little popularity in America until 1981, when Donkey Kong, a passion project of Shigeru Miyamoto, was released. In 1980, Nintendo introduced the Game & Watch, a series of portable video games designed by Yokoi, and featuring, newly for the time, an LCD and microprocessor. Though the product line was a hit, it was believed by Yamauchi that it lacked the depth to be a long-term success. Efforts to develop a product which could be one led to the release in 1983 of the Family Computer, a console commonly abbreviated as the Famicom. First-party titles were developed by Nintendo's R&D units; a third and fourth were established in 1980 and 1983, respectively. In the wake of the video game crash of 1983, which he believed was caused by a glut of poor-quality games, Yamauchi was not only strict about approving the release of games, but restricted third-party publishers to releasing just three titles a year. Still, games were made easy to develop, as he believed that artists, not technicians, create excellent games. Yamauchi's confidence in the Famicom paid off. He promised an electronics company that one million units would be ordered within two years, a goal easily reached. Released outside Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System, and redesigned to minimize its association with video games, the console was an equal smash; by 1990, the majority of consoles historically sold were NESes or Famicoms. Midway through the Famicom's lifespan, with 16-bit consoles becoming popular, work began on a successor, the Super Famicom. It was released in Japan in 1990; outside the country, it was renamed the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and released in North America in 1991, and Europe in 1992. Such was Nintendo's popularity, initial stocks in Japan sold out within three days, and people camped outside stores for days in the hopes of acquiring a console. Similar success was not achieved with the Virtual Boy, a 1995 attempt at a virtual reality console. At a press conference, Yamauchi stated that he still had faith in the system, and that the company would continue developing games for it.[citation needed] As the 1990s progressed, 3D gaming became increasingly viable. Nintendo primarily capitalized on this trend with the Nintendo 64, a 64-bit console released in 1996. Though praised by critics, it struggled commercially, with consumer attention devoted to the PlayStation, Sony's first console. For much of the 1990s, age was not an obstacle for Yamauchi. In 1995, when he was 68, he was called "the most feared and respected man in the videogame industry" by Next Generation magazine, which also noted that he "[remained] very much in charge" of Nintendo. Things began to change in 1996, when he publicly mused about retiring from Nintendo, noting that he could not think of a good replacement as president. In 1997, he announced that regardless of whether a suitable successor was found, he would retire by 2000, when the 64DD, a disk drive for the Nintendo 64, was released. In 1999, Nintendo announced the development of the successor to the Nintendo 64, codenamed Dolphin, and released across 2001 and 2002 as the GameCube. Where a DVD player was included in the PlayStation 2, driving sales, the GameCube was exclusively designed to be a console. It was believed by Yamauchi that this focus, as well as a low price compared to its competitors, and hardware that would allow developers to "easily create games", would set it apart from its competitors. On 24 May 2002, Yamauchi resigned as president of Nintendo, once again becoming chairman of the board of directors. He was succeeded by Satoru Iwata, leader of Nintendo's Corporate Planning Division. On 29 June 2005, citing his age and confidence in the company, he resigned from the board. Though he refused his retirement pension, reportedly around $9 to $14 million, he remained Nintendo's largest shareholder; as of 2008, he owned 10% of the company. In his retirement, Yamauchi donated money to build a cancer treatment center in Kyoto, and founded Shigureden, a museum of poetry (Ogura Hyakunin Isshu) in Kyoto. Personal life In 1950, Inaba gave birth to a daughter named Yōko, who would marry Minoru Arakawa, selected by Yamauchi to lead Nintendo's American subsidiary. Inaba had several miscarriages and was often ill. In 1957, she gave birth to another daughter, Fujiko and, shortly after, a son named Katsuhito. She died on 29 July 2012, aged 82. Years after abandoning the family, Yamauchi's father returned to see him; Yamauchi refused to speak to him. When Yamauchi was close to 30, his father died of a stroke. At the funeral, Yamauchi met his father's wife and their four daughters, whom he had never known about. He grieved for months, regretting that he had ignored his father, and began making visits to his father's grave. Yamauchi has been described as a stern man with a single-minded focus on business. His children disliked that he spent more time on Nintendo than them. Because of his tendency to fire employees who disagreed with him, he was characterized as an autocratic leader by Henk Rogers, pivotal to the success of the Game Boy through the release of an accompanying version of Tetris. Notably for the head of a company dedicated to them, he rarely played video games; among the exceptions is Igo: Kyuu Roban Taikyoku, developed by Rogers, and based on the board game Go. More so, he was interested in Go, achieving a high rank, and games which used hanafuda. Ownership of the Seattle Mariners In 1991, the Seattle Mariners were put up for sale; if a local owner could not be found, the team would be moved to Florida. Seeking to prevent this, a consortium of Seattle-area business owners formed The Baseball Club of Seattle, and searched for someone who could contribute a substantial amount of capital. When Microsoft owner Bill Gates declined to help, Slade Gorton, a Senator from Washington who had interacted with Nintendo during the Senate's hearings on IP theft, contacted Yamauchi through Howard Lincoln, CEO of Nintendo of America. Thankful to Seattle, where NoA is located, for their support of the company, Yamauchi agreed to the proposal, offering to contribute $75 million out of a bid of $125 million. The Mariners were interested, but Major League Baseball was not, objecting to the control of 60% of the team by someone from Japan. Only after facing sustained pressure, including from Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush, did they relent, and even then, Yamauchi was forbidden from owning more than 50% of the voting interest. As an owner, Yamauchi was rather hands-off, assigning his rights to the Mariners to Nintendo of America, and never attending a game. The one game he did plan to attend, to be held in Kyoto in 2003, was moved to the U.S. due to the impending Iraq War. Death On 19 September 2013, aged 85, Yamauchi died of complications of pneumonia. Nintendo released a statement stating that its staff members were mourning the loss of their former president. In popular culture References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/user/iforgot2live] | [TOKENS: 2717] |
iforgot2live u/iforgot2live r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/MinecraftCommands r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area iforgot2live replied to c_dubs063 yeah I ran a couple thousand blocks in each direction from my area while killing all the armor stands and it didn't seem to make a difference, also I have so many command blocks I don't even know where to begin on optimizing them or how to go about turning some of them off since there's not really a lot of command blocks I can easily just turn off and turn on when I need them since turning some off would break random parts of my game Reply reply A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area yeah I ran a couple thousand blocks in each direction from my area while killing all the armor stands and it didn't seem to make a difference, also I have so many command blocks I don't even know where to begin on optimizing them or how to go about turning some of them off since there's not really a lot of command blocks I can easily just turn off and turn on when I need them since turning some off would break random parts of my game r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/MinecraftCommands r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area iforgot2live replied to Chezitpha /kill @e[type=armor_stand] only kills armor stands in loaded areas, the problem is that there a lot of armor stands built up in a large area around the area I'm working in. Reply reply A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area /kill @e[type=armor_stand] only kills armor stands in loaded areas, the problem is that there a lot of armor stands built up in a large area around the area I'm working in. how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area r/MinecraftCommands r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • how to easily kill a lot of armor stands in a VERY large area Help | Bedrock my game has been getting very laggy due to the amount of armor stands that I haven't killed so a lot of things aren't working, so I need a way to kill armor stands in area multiple thousand blocks big it is very possible that unloaded entities doesn't affect lag and I just have way too many command blocks which, in that case I'm kinda screwed. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uquKok7Uz_h1q2Bzf4kqAfcf9o6w3Xr9/view?usp=sharing (a link to a picture of how many command blocks I have in my current area) A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. my game has been getting very laggy due to the amount of armor stands that I haven't killed so a lot of things aren't working, so I need a way to kill armor stands in area multiple thousand blocks big it is very possible that unloaded entities doesn't affect lag and I just have way too many command blocks which, in that case I'm kinda screwed. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uquKok7Uz_h1q2Bzf4kqAfcf9o6w3Xr9/view?usp=sharing (a link to a picture of how many command blocks I have in my current area) r/CalamityMod The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/CalamityMod r/CalamityMod The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Hardmode 2 Idea iforgot2live replied to AlphabiteSoup Is that what they're doing? I haven't heard, I just know they're adding a new dimension which is relatively different to what I'm thinking about. I'm not very up to date on calamity news so if they're already adding this I'll just delete the post Reply reply The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Hardmode 2 Idea Is that what they're doing? I haven't heard, I just know they're adding a new dimension which is relatively different to what I'm thinking about. I'm not very up to date on calamity news so if they're already adding this I'll just delete the post Hardmode 2 Idea r/CalamityMod r/CalamityMod The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Hardmode 2 Idea Discussion I just got an idea that calamity could add something like a hardmode 2 after moon lord. Similar to hardmode, all of the enemies stats would get set to be actually challenging for the gear the player has, and new things would be added throughout different areas of the game so that calamity's endgame would feel less like a boss rush. Someone told me that they thought a worldwide stat boost wouldn't be the best way to go about it, so if there's any alternatives you can think of, that would probably work too. I think if they were to add this, it would probably include new ores, new enemy drops, multiple new enemies throughout most of the biomes, and maybe new crafting stations similar to hardmode 1. Adding a hardmode 2 could easily add a lot of content for the mod, and give you a lot to do other than just fighting. Thoughts? The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. I just got an idea that calamity could add something like a hardmode 2 after moon lord. Similar to hardmode, all of the enemies stats would get set to be actually challenging for the gear the player has, and new things would be added throughout different areas of the game so that calamity's endgame would feel less like a boss rush. Someone told me that they thought a worldwide stat boost wouldn't be the best way to go about it, so if there's any alternatives you can think of, that would probably work too. I think if they were to add this, it would probably include new ores, new enemy drops, multiple new enemies throughout most of the biomes, and maybe new crafting stations similar to hardmode 1. Adding a hardmode 2 could easily add a lot of content for the mod, and give you a lot to do other than just fighting. Thoughts? r/CalamityMod The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/CalamityMod r/CalamityMod The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Addons for calamity iforgot2live commented I think the game is better when you keep the mods minimal, do all the calamity related addons you mentioned and add calamity's vanities if you want, but I think the only qol mods you really need are magic storage, boss checklist, recipe browser, wmitf, and optionally biome titles. if you want to skip through most of the game using qol mods that's fine but I think the game is more enjoyable with minimal mods, it just depends on how long you want your world to last. btw none of the ones you mentioned really conflict in any way Reply reply The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. The unofficial subreddit for discussing the Calamity Mod for Terraria. Addons for calamity I think the game is better when you keep the mods minimal, do all the calamity related addons you mentioned and add calamity's vanities if you want, but I think the only qol mods you really need are magic storage, boss checklist, recipe browser, wmitf, and optionally biome titles. if you want to skip through most of the game using qol mods that's fine but I think the game is more enjoyable with minimal mods, it just depends on how long you want your world to last. btw none of the ones you mentioned really conflict in any way r/tipofmyjoystick This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/tipofmyjoystick r/tipofmyjoystick This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • [xbox pc game pass] [2022?] top down bullet hell game with classes I can't remember the name of iforgot2live commented solved: Archvale Reply reply This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! [xbox pc game pass] [2022?] top down bullet hell game with classes I can't remember the name of solved: Archvale r/tipofmyjoystick This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/tipofmyjoystick r/tipofmyjoystick This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • [xbox pc game pass] [2022?] top down bullet hell game with classes I can't remember the name of iforgot2live replied to TheCaptainVideo yep, thanks Reply reply This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! This is a subreddit for finding the name of a game that you can't remember. Read the rules, post your description, and hopefully someone will be able to identify it. Be sure to help out if you think you may have an answer to someone else's post! [xbox pc game pass] [2022?] top down bullet hell game with classes I can't remember the name of yep, thanks iforgot2live 738 677 post karma, 61 comment karma Karma 128 Contributions 2 y Cake day: Jul 24, 2023 Reddit Age 12 Active in > Trophy Case |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#cite_ref-Bandcamp2_230-0] | [TOKENS: 12858] |
Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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Contents History of antisemitism The history of antisemitism, defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group, goes back many centuries, being called "the longest hatred". Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism: Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries". In practice, it is difficult to differentiate antisemitism from the general ill-treatment of nations by other nations before the Roman period, but since the adoption of Christianity in Europe, antisemitism has undoubtedly been present. The Islamic world has also historically seen the Jews as outsiders. The coming of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions in 19th-century Europe bred a new manifestation of antisemitism, based as much upon race as upon religion, which culminated in the Holocaust that occurred during World War II. The formation of the state of Israel in 1948 caused new antisemitic tensions in the Middle East. Classical period Louis H. Feldman argues: "We must take issue with the communis sensus that the pagan writers are predominantly anti-Semitic." He asserts that "one of the great puzzles that has confronted the students of anti-semitism is the alleged shift from pro-Jewish statements found in the first pagan writers who mention the Jews ... to the vicious anti-Jewish statements thereafter, beginning with Manetho about 270 BCE". In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "the Greek retelling of Ancient Egyptian prejudices". As examples of pagan writers who spoke positively of Jews, Feldman cites Aristotle, Theophrastus, Clearchus of Soli and Megasthenes. Feldman concedes that, after Manetho: "The picture usually painted is one of universal and virulent anti-Judaism."[citation needed] The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back to Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. Alexandrian Jewry were the largest Jewish community in the world and the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian of that time, wrote scathingly of the Jews and his themes are repeated in the works of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus. Hecateus of Abdera is quoted by Flavius Josephus as having written about the time of Alexander the Great that the Jews "have often been treated injuriously by the kings and governors of Persia, yet can they not be dissuaded from acting what they think best; but that when they are stripped on this account, and have torments inflicted upon them, and they are brought to the most terrible kinds of death, they meet them after an extraordinary manner, beyond all other people, and will not renounce the religion of their forefathers". One of the earliest anti-Jewish edicts, promulgated by Antiochus Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of the Maccabees in Judea. The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died. The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews' being portrayed as misanthropic. Tcherikover argues that the reason for the hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, the poleis.[page needed] However, Bohak has argued that early animosity against the Jews cannot be regarded as being anti-Judaic or antisemitic unless it arose from attitudes that were held against the Jews alone, because many Greeks showed animosity towards any group which they considered barbaric. Statements which exhibit prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan Greek and Roman writers. Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out. Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote that Moses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life". Manetho wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers who had been taught "not to adore the gods" by Moses. The same themes appear in the works of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus. Agatharchides of Cnidus wrote about the "ridiculous practices" of the Jews and he also wrote about the "absurdity of their Law", and he also wrote about how Ptolemy Lagus was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BC because its inhabitants were observing the Sabbath. Edward Flannery describes the form of antisemitism which existed in ancient times as being essentially "cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia which was played out in political settings". In one recorded instance, an Ancient Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem and banned Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision, Shabbat observance, and the study of Jewish religious books, during the period when Ancient Greece dominated the eastern Mediterranean. Statements exhibiting prejudice towards Jews and their religion can also be found in the works of a few pagan Greek and Roman writers, but the earliest occurrence of antisemitism has been the subject of debate among scholars, largely because different writers use different definitions of antisemitism. The terms "religious antisemitism" and "anti-Judaism" are sometimes used in reference to animosity towards Judaism as a religion rather than antisemitism, which is used in reference to animosity towards Jews as members of an ethnic or racial group.[citation needed] Relations between the Jews in Judea and the occupying Roman Empire were antagonistic from the very start and they resulted in several rebellions. It has been argued that European antisemitism has its roots in the Roman policy of religious persecution.[page needed] Several ancient historians report that in 19 CE, the Roman emperor Tiberius expelled the Jews from Rome. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Tiberius tried to suppress all foreign religions. In the case of the Jews, he sent young Jewish men, under the pretence of military service, to provinces which were noted for their unhealthy climate. He expelled all other Jews from the city, under threat of lifelong slavery for non-compliance. Josephus, in his Jewish Antiquities, confirms that Tiberius ordered all Jews to be banished from Rome. Four thousand Jews were sent to Sardinia but more Jews, who were unwilling to become soldiers, were punished. Cassius Dio reports that Tiberius banished most of the Jews, who had been attempting to convert the Romans to their religion. Philo of Alexandria reported that Sejanus, one of Tiberius's lieutenants, may have been a prime mover in the persecution of the Jews. The Romans refused to permit the Jews to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem after its destruction by Titus in 70 CE, imposed a tax on the Jews (Fiscus Judaicus) at the same time, ostensibly to finance the construction of the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, and renamed Judaea to Syria Palestina. The Jerusalem Talmud relates that, following the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), the Romans killed many Jews, "killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils". However, some historians argue that Rome brutally suppressed revolts in all of its conquered territories and they also point out that Tiberius expelled all adherents of foreign religions from Rome, not just the Jews. Some accommodations, in fact, were later made with Judaism, and the Jews of the Diaspora had privileges that others did not have. Unlike other subjects of the Roman Empire, the Jews had the right to maintain their religion and they were not expected to accommodate themselves to local customs. Even after the First Jewish–Roman War, the Roman authorities refused to rescind Jewish privileges in some cities. And although Hadrian outlawed circumcision as a form of mutilation which was normally inflicted upon people who were unable to consent to it, he later exempted the Jews from the ban on circumcision. According to the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon, there was greater tolerance of the Jews from about 160 CE. Between 355 and 363 CE, Julian the Apostate permitted the Jews to rebuild the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Rise of Christianity and Islam Although most of the New Testament was written, ostensibly, by Jews who became followers of Jesus, there are a number of passages in the New Testament that some consider antisemitic, and they have been used for antisemitic purposes.[page needed][page needed] A key accusation is that of Jewish deicide, i.e. the claim that Jews were collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus: The accusation that the Jews were Christ-killers fed Christian antisemitism and spurred on acts of violence against Jews such as pogroms, massacres of Jews during the Crusades, expulsions of the Jews from England, France, Spain, Portugal and other places, and torture during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. The Quran, the holy book of Muslims, contains some verses that can be interpreted as expressing very negative views of some Jews. After the Islamic prophet Muhammad moved to Medina in 622 CE, he made peace treaties with the Jewish tribes of Arabia and other tribes. However, the relationship between the followers of the new religion and the Jews of Medina later became bitter. At this point the Quran instructs Muhammad to change the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, and from this point on, the tone of the verses of the Quran become increasingly hostile towards Jewry. In 627 CE, Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza of Medina violated a treaty with Muhammad by allying with the attacking tribes. Subsequently, the tribe was charged with treason and besieged by the Muslims commanded by Muhammad himself. The Banu Qurayza were forced to surrender and the men were beheaded, while all the women and children were taken captive and enslaved.[excessive citations] Several scholars have challenged the veracity of this incident, arguing that it was exaggerated or invented. Later, several conflicts arose between Jews of Arabia and Muhammad and his followers, the most notable of which was in Khaybar, in which many Jews were killed and their properties seized and distributed among the Muslims. Late Roman Empire When Christianity became the state religion of Rome in the 4th century, Jews became the victims of religious intolerance and political oppression. Christian literature began to display extreme hostility towards Jews, which occasionally resulted in attacks against them and the burning of their synagogues. The hostility against Jews was reflected in the edicts which were imposed upon them by church councils and state laws. In the early 4th century, intermarriage between unconverted Jews and Christians was prohibited by the provisions of the Synod of Elvira. The Council of Antioch (341) prohibited Christians from celebrating Passover with the Jews while the Council of Laodicea forbade Christians from keeping the Jewish Sabbath. The Roman Emperor Constantine I instituted several laws concerning the Jews: they were forbidden to own Christian slaves and they were also forbidden to circumcise their slaves. The conversion of Christians to Judaism was also outlawed. Religious services were regulated, congregations were restricted, but Jews were allowed to enter Jerusalem on Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. Discrimination against Jews became worse in the 5th century. The edicts of the Codex Theodosianus (438) barred Jews from the civil service, the army and the legal profession. The Jewish Patriarchate was abolished and the scope of Jewish courts was restricted. Synagogues were confiscated and old synagogues could only be repaired if they were in danger of collapsing. Synagogues fell into ruin or they were converted to churches. Synagogues were destroyed in Tortona (350), Rome (388 and 500), Raqqa (388), Menorca (418), Daphne (near Antioch, 489 and 507), Genoa (500), Ravenna (495), Tours (585) and in Orléans (590). Other synagogues were confiscated: Urfa in 411, several in Judea between 419 and 422, Constantinople in 442 and 569, Antioch in 423, Vannes in 465, Diyarbakir in 500 Terracina in 590, Cagliari in 590 and Palermo in 590. Deicide is the killing of a god. In the context of Christianity, deicide refers to the responsibility for the death of Jesus. The accusation that the Jews committed deicide has been the most powerful warrant for antisemitism by Christians. The earliest recorded instance of an accusation of deicide against the Jewish people as a whole – that they were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus – occurs in a sermon of 167 CE attributed to Melito of Sardis entitled Peri Pascha, On the Passover. This text blames the Jews for allowing King Herod and Caiaphas to execute Jesus. Melito does not attribute particular blame to Pontius Pilate, he only mentions that Pilate washed his hands of guilt. The Latin word deicida (slayer of god), from which the word deicide is derived, was used in the 4th century by Peter Chrystologus in his sermon number 172. Though not part of Roman Catholic dogma, many Christians, including members of the clergy, once held Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews who were present at Jesus' death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time had committed the sin of deicide, or God-killing. Middle Ages Hostility to Judaism continued from the late Roman period into medieval times. During the Middle Ages in Europe there was a full-scale persecution of Jews in many places, with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and killings. In the 12th century, there were Christians who believed that some, or possibly all, of the Jews possessed magical powers and had gained these powers from making a pact with the devil. Judensau images began to appear in Germany. Although the Catholicised Visigothic kingdom in Spain issued a series of anti-Jewish edicts already in the 7th century, persecution of Jews in Europe reached a climax during the Crusades. Anti-Jewish rhetoric such as the Goad of Love began to appear and affect public consciousness. At the time of the First Crusade, in 1096, a German Crusade destroyed flourishing Jewish communities on the Rhine and the Danube. In the Second Crusade in 1147, the Jews in France were the victims of frequent killings and atrocities. Following the coronation of Richard the Lionheart in 1189, Jews were attacked in London. When king Richard left to join the Third Crusade in 1190, anti-Jewish riots broke out again in York and throughout England. In the first large-scale persecution in Germany after the First Crusade, 100,000 Jews were killed by Rintfleisch knights in 1298. The Jews were also subjected to attacks during the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320. In the 1330s Jews were assaulted by the Armleder, led by Arnold von Uissigheim, starting in 1336 in Franconia and subsequently by John Zimberlin during 1338–9 in Alsace who attacked more than one hundred Jewish communities. Following these crusades, Jews were subject to expulsions, including, in 1290, the banishing of all English Jews. In 1396, 100,000 Jews were expelled from France and in 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of those expelled fled to Poland. As the Black Death plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half of the population, Jews often became the scapegoats. Rumors spread that they had caused this epidemic by deliberately poisoning wells, an accusation that appeared before in the 1321 leper scare. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by the ensuing hatred and violence. Pope Clement VI tried to protect Jews by a papal bull dated 6 July 1348, and by an additional bull soon afterwards, but several months later, 900 Jews were burnt alive in Strasbourg, where the plague had not yet affected the city. The Jews of Prague were attacked on Easter of 1389. The massacres of 1391 marked a decline in the Golden Age for Spanish Jewry. From the 9th century onwards, the medieval Islamic world imposed dhimmi status on Christian and Jewish minorities. Nevertheless, Jews were granted more freedom to practise their religion in the Muslim world than they were in Christian Europe. Jewish communities in Spain thrived under tolerant Muslim rule during the Spanish Golden Age and Cordova became a centre of Jewish culture. With the entrance of the Almoravides from North Africa in the 11th century, however, harsh measures were taken against both Christians and Jews. As part of this repression there were pogroms against Jews in Cordova in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. The Almohads, who by 1147 had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories, took a less tolerant view still and treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians took a third option if they could, and fled. Some, such as the family of Maimonides, went east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms. At certain times in the Middle Ages, in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted. Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad. 6,000 Jews were killed by a Muslim mob during the 1033 Fez massacre. There were further massacres in Fez in 1276 and 1465, and in Marrakesh in 1146 and 1232. Restrictions upon Jewish occupations were imposed by Christian authorities. Local rulers and church officials closed many professions to Jews, pushing them into marginal roles which were considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending, occupations which were only tolerated as a "necessary evil". At that time, Catholic doctrine taught the view that lending money for interest was a sin, and an occupation which Christians were forbidden to engage in. Not being subject to this restriction, insofar as loans to non-Jews were concerned, Jews made this business their own, despite possible criticism of usury in the Torah and later sections of the Hebrew Bible. This led to many negative stereotypes of Jews as insolent, greedy usurers and the tensions between creditors (typically Jews) and debtors (typically Christians) added to social, political, religious, and economic strains. Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jews could see them as personally taking their money while unaware of those on whose behalf these Jews worked.[citation needed] Jews were subject to a wide range of legal disabilities and restrictions throughout the Middle Ages, some of which lasted until the end of the 19th century. Even moneylending and peddling were at times forbidden to them. The number of Jews permitted to reside in different places was limited; they were concentrated in ghettos and were not allowed to own land; they were subject to discriminatory taxes on entering cities or districts other than their own and were forced to swear special Jewish Oaths, and they suffered a variety of other measures. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that Jews and Muslims must wear distinguishing clothing. The most common such clothing was the Jewish hat, which was already worn by many Jews as a self-identifying mark, but was now often made compulsory. The Jewish badge was introduced in some places; it could be a coloured piece of cloth in the shape of a circle, strip, or the tablets of the law (in England), and was sewn onto the clothes. Elsewhere special colours of robe were specified. Implementation was in the hands of local rulers but by the following century laws had been enacted covering most of Europe. In many localities, members of Medieval society wore badges to distinguish their social status. Some badges (such as those worn by guild members) were prestigious, while others were worn by ostracised outcasts such as lepers, reformed heretics and prostitutes. As with all sumptuary laws, the degree to which these laws were followed and enforced varied greatly. Sometimes, Jews sought to evade the badges by paying what amounted to bribes in the form of temporary "exemptions" to kings, which were revoked and re-paid for whenever the king needed to raise funds.[citation needed] By the end of the Middle Ages, the hat seems to have become rare, but the badge lasted longer and remained in some places until the 18th century. The Crusades were a series of military campaigns sanctioned by the Papacy in Rome, which took place from the end of the 11th century until the 13th century. They began as endeavors to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims but developed into territorial wars. The People's Crusade that accompanied the First Crusade attacked Jewish communities in Germany, France, and England, and killed many Jews. Entire communities, like those of Treves, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were murdered by armed mobs. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhineland cities alone between May and July 1096. The religious zeal fomented by the Crusades at times burned as fiercely against Jews as against Muslims, although attempts were made by bishops during the first Crusade and by the papacy during the Second Crusade to stop Jews from being attacked. Both economically and socially, the Crusades were disastrous for European Jews. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III. The Jewish defenders of Jerusalem retreated to their synagogue to "prepare for death" once the Crusaders had breached the outer walls of the city during the siege of 1099. The chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi states that the building was set on fire while the Jews were still inside. The Crusaders were supposedly reported as hoisting up their shields and singing "Christ We Adore Thee!" while they encircled the burning building." Following the siege, Jews captured from the Dome of the Rock, along with native Christians, were made to clean the city of the slain. Numerous Jews and their holy books (including the Aleppo Codex) were held ransom by Raymond of Toulouse. The Karaite Jewish community of Ashkelon (Ascalon) reached out to their coreligionists in Alexandria to first pay for the holy books and then rescued pockets of Jews over several months. All that could be ransomed were liberated by the summer of 1100. The few who could not be rescued were either converted to Christianity or murdered. In the County of Toulouse, in southern France, toleration and favour shown to Jews was one of the main complaints of the Roman Church against the Counts of Toulouse at the beginning of the 13th century. Organised and official persecution of the Jews became a normal feature of life in southern France only after the Albigensian Crusade, because it was only then that the Church became powerful enough to insist that measures of discrimination be applied. In 1209, stripped to the waist and barefoot, Raymond VI of Toulouse was obliged to swear that he would no longer allow Jews to hold public office. In 1229 his son Raymond VII underwent a similar ceremony. In 1236, Crusaders attacked the Jewish communities of Anjou and Poitou, killing 3,000 and baptizing 500. Two years after the 1240 disputation of Paris, twenty-four wagons piled with hand-written Talmudic manuscripts were burned in the streets. Other disputations occurred in Spain, followed by accusations against the Talmud. While some popes offered protection to Jews, others implemented restrictive policies and actions that contributed to their marginalization and persecution. A key role was played by Pope Innocent III who justified his calls for lay and Church authorities to restrict Jewish "insolence" by claiming God made Jews slaves for rejecting and killing Christ. He proclaimed them to be the enemies of Christ, who must be kept in a position of social inferiority and prevented from exercising power over Christians. On many occasions, Jews were accused of drinking the blood of Christian children in mockery of the Christian Eucharist. According to the authors of these so-called blood libels, the 'procedure' for the alleged sacrifice was something like this: a child who had not yet reached puberty was kidnapped and taken to a hidden place. The child would be tortured by Jews, and a crowd would gather at the place of execution (in some accounts the synagogue itself) and engage in a mock tribunal to try the child. The child would be presented to the tribunal naked and tied and eventually be condemned to death. In the end, the child would be crowned with thorns and tied or nailed to a wooden cross. The cross would be raised, and the blood dripping from the child's wounds would be caught in bowls or glasses and then drunk. Finally, the child would be killed with a thrust through the heart from a spear, sword, or dagger. Its dead body would be removed from the cross and concealed or disposed of, but in some instances rituals of black magic would be performed on it. This method, with some variations, can be found in all the alleged Christian descriptions of ritual murder by Jews. The story of William of Norwich (d. 1144) is often cited as the first known accusation of ritual murder against Jews. The Jews of Norwich, England were accused of murder after a Christian boy, William, was found dead. It was claimed that the Jews had tortured and crucified him. The legend of William of Norwich became a cult, and the child acquired the status of a holy martyr. Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255), in the 13th century, reputedly had his belly cut open and his entrails removed for some occult purpose, such as a divination ritual, after being taken from a cross. Simon of Trent (d. 1475), in the fifteenth century, was held over a large bowl so that all of his blood could be collected, it was alleged. During the Middle Ages, such blood libels were directed against Jews in many parts of Europe. The believers in these false accusations reasoned that the Jews, having crucified Jesus, continued to thirst for pure and innocent blood, at the expense of innocent Christian children.[page needed] Jews were also sometimes falsely accused of desecrating consecrated hosts in a reenactment of the Crucifixion; this crime was known as host desecration and it carried the death penalty. The practice of expelling Jews, the confiscation of their property and further ransom for their return was used to enrich the French crown during the 13th and 14th centuries. The most notable such expulsions were from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from the whole of France by Louis IX in 1254, by Philip IV in 1306, by Charles IV in 1322 and by Charles VI in 1394. Jewish expulsions inside England took place in Bury St. Edmunds in 1190, Newcastle in 1234, Wycombe in 1235, Southampton in 1236, Berkhamsted in 1242 and Newbury in 1244. Simon de Montfort banished the Jews of Leicester in 1231. During the Second Barons' War in the 1260s, Simon de Montfort's followers ravaged the Jewries of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Winchester, Cambridge, Worcester and Lincoln in an effort to destroy the records of their debts to moneylenders. To finance his war against Wales in 1276, Edward I of England taxed Jewish moneylenders. When the moneylenders could no longer pay the tax, they were accused of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, Edward abolished their "privilege" to lend money, restricted their movements and activities and forced Jews to wear a yellow patch. The heads of Jewish households were then arrested with over 300 being taken to the Tower of London and executed. Others were killed in their homes. All Jews were banished from the country in 1290, where it was possible that hundreds were killed or drowned while trying to leave the country.[page needed] All the money and property of these dispossessed Jews was confiscated. No Jews were known to be in England thereafter until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell reversed the policy.[citation needed] In Germany, part of the Holy Roman Empire, persecutions and formal expulsions of the Jews were liable to occur at intervals, although it should be said that this was also the case for other minority communities, whether religious or ethnic. There were particular outbursts of riotous persecution in the Rhineland massacres of 1096 accompanying the lead-up to the First Crusade, many involving the crusaders as they travelled to the East. There were many local expulsions from cities by local rulers and city councils. The Holy Roman Emperor generally tried to restrain persecution, if only for economic reasons, but he was often unable to exert much influence. As late as 1519, the Imperial city of Regensburg took advantage of the recent death of Emperor Maximilian I to expel its 500 Jews. At this period the rulers of the eastern edges of Europe, in Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, were often receptive to Jewish settlement, and many Jews moved to these regions. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by violence during the ravages of the Black Death, particularly in the Iberian peninsula and in the Germanic Empire. In Provence, 40 Jews were burnt in Toulon as quickly after the outbreak as April 1348. "Never mind that Jews were not immune from the ravages of the plague; they were tortured until they 'confessed' to crimes that they could not possibly have committed. In one such case, a man named Agimet was ... coerced to say that Rabbi Peyret of Chambéry (near Geneva) had ordered him to poison the wells in Venice, Toulouse, and elsewhere. In the aftermath of Agimet's 'confession', the Jews of Strasbourg were burned alive on February 14, 1349." Early modern period In the Catholic kingdoms of late medieval and early modern Spain, oppressive policies and attitudes led many Jews to embrace Christianity. Such Jews were known as conversos or Marranos. Suspicions that they might still secretly be adherents of Judaism led Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile to institute the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition used torture to elicit confessions and delivered judgment at public ceremonials known as autos de fe before they gave their victims over to the secular authorities for punishment. Under this dispensation, some 30,000 were condemned to death and executed by being burnt alive. In 1492, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile issued an edict of expulsion of Jews from Spain, giving Jews four months to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. Some 165,000 emigrated and some 50,000 converted to Christianity. The same year the order of expulsion arrived in Sicily and Sardinia, belonging to Spain. Portugal followed suit in December 1496. However, those expelled could only leave the country in ships specified by the King. When those who chose to leave the country arrived at the port in Lisbon, they were met by clerics and soldiers who used force, coercion and promises to baptize them and prevent them from leaving the country. This episode technically ended the presence of Jews in Portugal. Afterwards, all converted Jews and their descendants would be referred to as New Christians or Conversos, and those were rumoured to practice crypto-Judaism were pejoratively labelled as Marranos. They were given a grace period of thirty years during which no inquiry into their faith would be allowed. This period was later extended until 1534. However, a popular riot in 1506 resulted in the deaths of up to four or five thousand Jews, and the execution of the leaders of the riot by King Manuel. Those labeled as New Christians were under the surveillance of the Portuguese Inquisition from 1536 until 1821. Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, known as Sephardi Jews from the Hebrew word for Spain, fled to North Africa, Turkey and Palestine within the Ottoman Empire, and to Holland, France and Italy. Within the Ottoman Empire, Jews could openly practise their religion. Amsterdam in Holland also became a focus for settlement by the persecuted Jews from many lands in succeeding centuries. In the Papal states, Jews were forced to live in ghettos and subjected to several restrictions as part of the Cum nimis absurdum of 1555. Martin Luther, a Lutheran Augustinian friar excommunicated by the Papacy for heresy, and an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies, written in 1543. He portrays the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriates them and provides detailed recommendations for a pogrom against them, calling for their permanent oppression and expulsion. At one point he writes: "...we are at fault in not slaying them..." a passage that "may be termed the first work of modern antisemitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust." Luther's harsh comments about the Jews are seen by many as a continuation of medieval Christian antisemitism. Muslow and Popkin assert that, "the antisemitism of the early modern period was even worse than that of the Middle Ages; and nowhere was this more obvious than in those areas which roughly encompass modern-day Germany, especially among Lutherans." In his final sermon shortly before his death, however, Luther preached: "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord." Simon of Trent was a boy from the city of Trento, Italy, who was found dead at the age of two in 1475, having allegedly been kidnapped, mutilated, and drained of blood. His disappearance was blamed on the leaders of the city's Jewish community, based on confessions extracted under torture, in a case that fueled the rampant antisemitism of the time. Simon was regarded as a saint, and was canonized by Pope Sixtus V in 1588. 17th century During the 1614 Fettmilch uprising, mobs led by Vincenz Fettmilch looted the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, expelling Jews from the city. Two years later emperor Matthias executed Fettmilch and made the Jews return to the city under protection by imperial soldiers. In the mid-17th century, Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Amsterdam, later New York City, sought to bolster the position of the Dutch Reformed Church by trying to stem the religious influence of Jews, Lutherans, Catholics and Quakers. He stated that Jews were "deceitful", "very repugnant", and "hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ". However, religious plurality was already a cultural tradition and a legal obligation in New Amsterdam and in the Netherlands, and his superiors at the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam overruled him. The Caribbean offered Jews amongst the most freedoms of any place in the 17th century world. By the mid-century, Jews became a constant presence in the West Indian colonies, particularly those under British rule. The dearth of resources and lack of common will to establish a strong Church presence in the colonies allowed many Jews to acquire Letters of Denization, granting them the status of English subjects. Nonetheless, Jews in colonies like Jamaica were subject to higher additional taxes, were prohibited from holding public office, and could not serve in the militia. In 1661, Merchants in Barbados petitioned for Jews to be barred from trade "the Jews are a people so subtle in matters of trade" continuing "that in a short time they will not only ingross trade among themselves, but will be able to divert the benefit thereof to other places." Such antisemitic attitudes caused many Jews to settle in the Leeward Islands; however, even across smaller colonies, Jews continued to be treated as second-class citizens. During the mid-to-late-17th century the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million people). The decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, including emigration, deaths from diseases and captivity in the Ottoman Empire. These conflicts began in 1648 when Bohdan Khmelnytsky instigated the Khmelnytsky uprising against the Polish aristocracy and the Jews who administered their estates. Khmelnytsky's Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas that he controlled (now Ukraine). This persecution led many Jews to pin their hopes on a man called Shabbatai Zevi who emerged in the Ottoman Empire at this time and proclaimed himself Messiah in 1665. However, his later conversion to Islam dashed these hopes and led many Jews to discredit the traditional belief in the coming of the Messiah as the hope of salvation. In the Zaydi imamate of Yemen, Jews were also singled out for discrimination in the 17th century, which culminated in the general expulsion of all Jews from places in Yemen to the arid coastal plain of Tihamah and which became known as the Mawza Exile. 18th century In many European countries the 18th century "Age of Enlightenment" saw the dismantling of archaic corporate, hierarchical forms of society in favour of individual equality of citizens before the law. How this new state of affairs would affect previously autonomous, though subordinated, Jewish communities became known as the Jewish question. In many countries, enhanced civil rights were gradually extended to the Jews, though often only in a partial form and on condition that the Jews abandon many aspects of their previous identity in favour of integration and assimilation with the dominant society. According to Arnold Ages, Voltaire's "Lettres philosophiques, Dictionnaire philosophique, and Candide, to name but a few of his better known works, are saturated with comments on Jews and Judaism and the vast majority are negative". Paul H. Meyer adds: "There is no question but that Voltaire, particularly in his later years, nursed a violent hatred of the Jews and it is equally certain that his animosity...did have a considerable impact on public opinion in France." Thirty of the 118 articles in Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique concerned Jews and described them in consistently negative ways. In 1744, Frederick II of Prussia limited the number of Jews allowed to live in Breslau to only ten so-called "protected" Jewish families and encouraged a similar practice in other Prussian cities. In 1750 he issued the Revidiertes General Privilegium und Reglement vor die Judenschaft: forcing these "protected" Jews to "either abstain from marriage or leave Berlin." In the same year, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on condition that they pay for their readmission every ten years. This was known among the Jews as malke-geld (queen's money). In 1752 she introduced a law limiting each Jewish family to one son. In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of these practices in his Toleranzpatent, on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled. In 1768, thousands of Jews were killed by Cossack Haidamaks during the massacre of Uman in the Kingdom of Poland. Jews in Switzerland were greatly restricted in their freedom of work, movement and settlement, and in the 17th century, Aargau was the only federal condominium where they were tolerated. In 1774, the Jews were restricted to just two towns, Endingen and Lengnau. While the rural upper class pressed incessantly for their expulsion, the financial interests of the authorities prevented it. They imposed special taxes on peddling and cattle trading, the primary Jewish professions. The Jews were directly subordinate to the governor; from 1696, they were compelled to renew a (costly) letter of protection every 16 years. During this period, Jews and Christians were not allowed to live under the same roof, nor were Jews allowed to own land or houses. They were taxed at a much higher rate than others and, in 1712, a pogrom took place in Lengnau, resulting in considerable property destruction. In 1760, they were further restricted regarding marriages and procreation. An exorbitant tax was levied on marriage licenses; oftentimes, they were outright refused. This remained the case until the 19th century. In accordance with the anti-Jewish precepts of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russia's discriminatory policies towards Jews intensified when the partition of Poland in the 18th century resulted, for the first time in Russian history, in the possession of land with a large population of Jews. This land was designated as the Pale of Settlement from which Jews were forbidden to migrate into the interior of Russia. In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews of the Pale of Settlement to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland.[better source needed] 19th century Following legislation supporting the equality of French Jews with other citizens during the French Revolution, similar laws promoting Jewish emancipation were enacted in the early 19th century in those parts of Europe over which France had influence. The old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded. Despite laws granting legal and political equality to Jews in a number of countries, traditional cultural discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial antisemitism.[citation needed] The 19th century saw the emergence of nationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, which usually excluded Jews from the national community as an alien race. Allied to this were theories of Social Darwinism, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings, and often advocated the superiority of Aryans to Semitic Jews. This was particularly evident in Germany where after the unification of 1871 nationalists, striving for a German identity, sought to exclude minorities like Jews as "the other", thus not truly German. Some, like the historian and politician, Heinrich von Treitschke, demanded that Jews fully assimilate and abandon their cultural identity, "for we do not want to see millennia of Germanic morality followed by an era of German-Jewish hybrid culture" While many Jews assimilated, nationalists sought new ways to exclude them, leading to the emergence of racial antisemitism. 19th century writers like Arthur de Gobineau promoted theories of "Aryan" racial supremacy. In 1835, the historian Friedrich Schubert labeled Jews "an Asiatic tribe" incapable of being part of the German nation. The newly coined term, "antisemitism", was a product of this racialized thinking, most extensively popularized by Wilhelm Marr. In his 1879 pamphlet, "The Victory of Judaism over Germandom," Marr depicted a racial conflict between Germans and Jews, asserting that liberalism and Jewish emancipation had allowed them to dominate German finance and industry. He argued this struggle could only end with the destruction of one race by the other and that a Jewish victory would mean the end of the German people. Marr founded the League of Antisemites in 1879, which advocated for the forced removal of Jews from Germany. This racial concept of antisemitism quickly spread across Europe, to France, Austria and elsewhere, with rabidly antisemitic books and newspapers, like Édouard Drumont's La Libre Parole (The Free Speech) and its motto "France for the French", blaming Jews for all the nation's problems and portraying them as a threat to all Frenchmen. This was exacerbated by capitalism, with its mass production and industrialized agriculture, which threatened the livelihood of artisans and peasants. Nationalist politicians blamed Jews for these ills. The influx of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Tsarist Russia in the 1880s also fueled antisemitism. In 1887 Austrian nationalist parties, advocating racist policies against minorities, voted for a bill to restrict the immigration of Russian and Romanian Jews. Similarly, antisemitic political parties in Germany adopted a strong Christian identity and sought to restrict the immigration of Russian Jews, as a first step toward striping all rights from Jews. In 1897, the populist Karl Leuger, became mayor of Vienna, by wielding antisemitism and policies against Slavic minorities as a tool to gain political power and mobilize the masses. Carl Schorske, called this "politics in a new key," characterized by emotion, charismatic leadership, and mass movements, with antisemitism playing a major role, in contrast to the earlier, more rational, parliamentary liberalism. Adolf Hitler, who spent the years 1907–1913 in Vienna, later described Karl Leuger as a major inspiration. While a new, nationalist antisemitism emerged, traditional Christian antisemitism endured, in response to the liberalism and Jewish emancipation of the French Revolution. Following the defeat of Napoleon, who demolished the walls of the Roman ghetto, the Vatican rebuilt its walls and Jews in the Papal States remained confined to overcrowded, squalid ghettos, until the Papal States were abolished in 1870. Conversionary sermons were again mandatory, and if a Jew chose to convert, the police forcibly took his family to the House of Catechumens to ensure the couple remained together. Educational and professional opportunities for Jews were severely restricted. Pope Pius IX, opposing modern liberal movements, reinforced accusations of Jewish ritual murder, The counter-revolutionary Catholic royalist Louis de Bonald stands out among the earliest figures to explicitly call for the reversal of Jewish emancipation in the wake of the French Revolution. Bonald's attacks on the Jews are likely to have influenced Napoleon's decision to limit the civil rights of Alsatian Jews. Bonald's article Sur les juifs (1806) was one of the most venomous screeds of its era and furnished a paradigm which combined anti-liberalism, traditional Christian antisemitism, and the identification of Jews with bankers and finance capital, which would in turn influence many subsequent right-wing reactionaries such as Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, Charles Maurras, and Édouard Drumont, nationalists such as Maurice Barrès and Paolo Orano, and antisemitic socialists such as Alphonse Toussenel and Henry Hyndman. Bonald furthermore declared that the Jews were an "alien" people, a "state within a state", and should be forced to wear a distinctive mark to more easily identify and discriminate against them. In the 1840s, the popular counter-revolutionary Catholic journalist Louis Veuillot propagated Bonald's arguments against the Jewish "financial aristocracy" along with vicious attacks against the Talmud and the Jews as a "deicidal people" driven by hatred to "enslave" Christians. Gougenot des Mousseaux's Le Juif, le judaïsme et la judaïsation des peuples chrétiens (1869) has been called a "Bible of modern antisemitism" and was translated into German by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. In Italy, the Jesuit priest Antonio Bresciani's highly popular novel 1850 novel L'Ebreo di Verona (The Jew of Verona) shaped religious antisemitism for decades, as did his work for La Civiltà Cattolica, which he helped launch. In the Papal States, Jews were baptized involuntarily, and, even when such baptisms were illegal, forced to practice the Christian religion. In some cases, the state separated them from their families, of which the Edgardo Mortara account is one of the most widely publicized instances of acrimony between Catholics and Jews in the second half of the 19th century. Civil rights granted to Jews in Germany, following the occupation of that country by the French under Napoleon, were rescinded after his defeat. Pleas to retain them by diplomats at the Congress of Vienna peace conference (1814–5) were unsuccessful. In 1819, German Jews were attacked in the Hep-Hep riots. Full Jewish emancipation was not granted in Germany until 1871, when the country was united under the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his 1843 essay On the Jewish Question, Karl Marx used the stereotype of the practical "huckstering" Jew as an example of a historical trend towards the dominance of Capital. In 1850, German composer Richard Wagner published Das Judenthum in der Musik ("Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to accuse Jewish influences more widely of being a harmful and alien element in German culture. The term "antisemitism" was coined by the German agitator and publicist, Wilhelm Marr in 1879. In that year, Marr founded the Antisemites League and published a book called Victory of Jewry over Germandom. The late 1870s saw the growth of antisemitic political parties in Germany. These included the Christian Social Party, founded in 1878 by Adolf Stoecker, the Lutheran chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, as well as the German Social Antisemitic Party and the Antisemitic People's Party. However, they did not enjoy mass electoral support and at their peak in 1907, had only 16 deputies out of a total of 397 in the parliament. The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) was blamed by some on the Jews. Jews were accused of weakening the national spirit through association with republicanism, capitalism and anti-clericalism, particularly by authoritarian, right wing, clerical and royalist groups. These accusations were spread in antisemitic journals such as La Libre Parole, founded by Edouard Drumont and La Croix, the organ of the Catholic order of the Assumptionists. Between 1882 and 1886 alone, French priests published twenty antisemitic books blaming France's ills on the Jews and urging the government to consign them back to the ghettos, expel them, or hang them from the gallows. Financial scandals such as the collapse of the Union Generale Bank and the collapse of the French Panama Canal operation were also blamed on the Jews. The Dreyfus affair saw a Jewish military officer named Captain Alfred Dreyfus falsely accused of treason in 1895 by his army superiors and sent to Devil's Island after being convicted. Dreyfus was acquitted in 1906, but the case polarised French opinion between antisemitic authoritarian nationalists and philosemitic anti-clerical republicans, with consequences which were to resonate into the 20th century. Having been restricted in their rights of work and movement since the Middle Ages, on 5 May 1809, Jews were finally declared Swiss citizens and given limited rights regarding trade and farming. They were still restricted to Endingen and Lengnau until 7 May 1846, when their right to move and reside freely within the canton of Aargau was granted. On 24 September 1856, the Swiss Federal Council granted them full political rights within Aargau, as well as broad business rights; however, the majority Christian population did not fully abide by these new liberal laws. The time of 1860 saw the canton government voting to grant suffrage in all local rights and to give their communities autonomy. Before the law was enacted however, it was repealed due to vocal opposition led by Johann Nepomuk Schleuniger and the Ultramonte Party. In 1866, a referendum granted all Jews full citizenship rights in Switzerland. However, they did not receive all of the rights in Endingen and Lengnau until a resolution of the Grand Council, on 15 May 1877, when Jewish citizens were given charters under the names of New Endingen and New Lengnau, finally granting them full citizenship. Between 1881 and 1920, approximately three million Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe migrated to America, many of them fleeing pogroms and the difficult economic conditions which were widespread in much of Eastern Europe during this time. Many Americans distrusted these Jewish immigrants. Along with Italians, Irish and other Eastern and Southern Europeans, Jews faced discrimination in the United States in employment, education and social advancement. American groups like the Immigration Restriction League, criticized these new arrivals along with immigrants from Asia and southern and eastern Europe, as culturally, intellectually, morally, and biologically inferior. Despite these attacks, very few Eastern European Jews returned to Europe for whatever privations they faced, their situation in the U.S. was still improved. Beginning in the early 1880s, declining farm prices also prompted elements of the Populist movement to blame the perceived evils of capitalism and industrialism on Jews because of their alleged racial/religious inclination for financial exploitation and, more specifically, because of the alleged financial manipulations of Jewish financiers such as the Rothschilds. Although Jews played only a minor role in the nation's commercial banking system, the prominence of Jewish investment bankers such as the Rothschilds in Europe, and Jacob Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York City, made the claims of antisemites believable to some. The Morgan Bonds scandal injected populist antisemitism into the 1896 presidential campaign. It was disclosed that the government of President Grover Cleveland had sold bonds to a syndicate which included J. P. Morgan and the Rothschilds house, bonds which that syndicate was now selling for a profit. The Populists used it as an opportunity to prove that Washington and Wall Street were in the hands of the international Jewish banking houses. Another focus of antisemitic feeling was the allegation that Jews were at the center of an international conspiracy to fix the currency and thus the economy to a single gold standard. Since 1827, Jewish minors were conscripted into the cantonist schools for a 25-year military service. Policy towards Jews was liberalised somewhat under Tsar Alexander II, but antisemitic attitudes and long-standing repressive policies against Jews were intensified after Alexander II was assassinated on 13 March 1881, culminating in widespread anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire which lasted for three years. A hardening of official attitudes under Tsar Alexander III and his ministers, resulted in the May Laws of 1882, which severely restricted the civil rights of Jews within the Russian Empire. The Tsar's minister Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev stated that the aim of the government with regard to the Jews was that: "One third will die out, one third will leave the country and one third will be completely dissolved [into] the surrounding population". In the event, a mix of pogroms and repressive legislation did indeed result in the mass emigration of Jews to western Europe and America. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War, an estimated two and half million Jews left Russia – one of the largest mass migrations in recorded history. Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab antisemitism in the modern world arose in the 19th century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalisms, and it was primarily imported into the Arab world by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized"). Hundreds of Algerian Jews were killed in 1805. There was a massacre of Iraqi Jews in Baghdad in 1828. In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue and destroyed the Torah scrolls, and it was only by forced conversion that a massacre was averted. There was a massacre of Jews in Barfurush in 1867. In 1840, in the Damascus affair, the Jews of Damascus were falsely accused of having ritually murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of having used their blood to bake Passover bread. In 1859, some 400 Jews in Morocco were killed in Mogador. In 1864, around 500 Jews were killed in Marrakesh and Fez in Morocco. In 1869, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis, and an Arab mob looted Jewish homes and stores, and burned synagogues, on Djerba Island. Concerning the life of Persian Jews in the middle of the 19th century, a contemporary author wrote: ...they are obliged to live in a separate part of town... for they are considered as unclean creatures... Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt... For the same reason, they are prohibited to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans... If a Jew is recognized as such in the streets, he is subjected to the greatest insults. The passers-by spit in his face, and sometimes beat him... unmercifully... If a Jew enters a shop for anything, he is forbidden to inspect the goods... Should his hand incautiously touch the goods, he must take them at any price the seller chooses to ask for them. One symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. A 19th-century traveler observed: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan." In 1891, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia. 20th century In the 20th century, antisemitism and Social Darwinism culminated in a systematic campaign of genocide, called the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were exterminated in German-occupied Europe between 1941 and 1945 under the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler. In Russia, under the Tsarist regime, antisemitism intensified in the early years of the 20th century and was given official favour when the secret police forged the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document purported to be a transcription of a plan by Jewish elders to achieve global domination. Violence against the Jews in the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 was continued after the 1905 revolution by the activities of the Black Hundreds. The Beilis Trial of 1913 showed that it was possible to revive the blood libel accusation in Russia. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution ended official discrimination against the Jews but was followed, however, by massive anti-Jewish violence by the anti-Bolshevik White Army and the forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic in the Russian Civil War. From 1918 to 1921, between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews were slaughtered during the White Terror. White emigres from revolutionary Russia fostered the idea that the Bolshevik regime, with its many Jewish members, was a front for the global Jewish conspiracy, outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had by now achieved wide circulation in the west. The pogroms were committed not only by White forces, but also by Red forces, local warlords, and ordinary Ukrainian and Polish citizens. In 1918, newly independent Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe. Between 1918 and 1921, some 130 pogroms resulted in an estimated 300 Jewish deaths, driven by resentment over their perceived economic power and claims of supporting "Judeo-Bolshevism". Western pressure led to Poland granting Jews equal rights and religious freedoms in its 1921 Constitution. While conditions improved under Józef Piłsudski's rule (1926–1935), antisemitism grew during the Great Depression. Nationalists, like National Democracy ideologue Roman Dmowski, promoted Nazi-style antisemitic propaganda, claiming Poland could not accommodate 3 million Jews, demanding they emigrate. From 1935 to 1937, anti-Jewish violence killed 79 Jews and injured 500. In 1936, Cardinal Hlond, the Catholic primate of Poland, published a pastoral letter condemning the attacks, but also accused Jews of battling the Church, promoting atheism and communism, corrupting morality, disseminating pornography, engaging in treachery and usury. The Polish government likewise condemned the violence and sought ways to reduce the Jewish populace through mass emigration, even exploring sending them to Madagascar. In 1938, it stripped Polish citizenship from tens of thousands of Jews living abroad. By the outbreak of WWII in 1939, the government was considering its own version of the Nuremberg Laws. During the war the Nazis implemented the Holocaust in Poland. They used Polish police and railroad personnel to guard the ghettos and transport Jews. The Blue Police helped enforce German anti-Jewish policies, such as the ghetto liquidations from 1942 to 1943. Encouraged by Nazi antisemitism, local residents attacked Jews in a number of small towns, as during the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom where several hundred Jews were murdered by their neighbors, and in Gniewczyna Łańcucka in 1942 where residents tortured, raped, and killed dozens of their Jewish neighbors. In France, antisemitic agitation was promoted by right-wing groups such as Action Française, founded by Charles Maurras. These groups were critical of the whole political establishment of the Third Republic. Following the Stavisky Affair, in which a Jewish man named Serge Alexandre Stavisky was revealed to be involved in high-level political corruption, these groups encouraged serious rioting which almost toppled the government in the 6 February 1934 crisis. The rise to prominence of the Jewish socialist Léon Blum, who became prime minister of the Popular Front Government in 1936, further polarised opinion within France. Action Française and other right-wing groups launched a vicious antisemitic press campaign against Blum which culminated in an attack in which he was dragged from his car and kicked and beaten while a mob screamed 'Death to the Jew!' Catholic writers such as Ernest Jouin, who published the Protocols in French, seamlessly blended racial and religious antisemitism, as in his statement that "from the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity." Pope Pius XI praised Jouin for "combating our mortal [Jewish] enemy" and appointed him to high papal office as a protonotary apostolic. Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France during World War II. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation. The antisemitic demands of right-wing groups were implemented under the collaborating Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain, following the defeat of the French by the German army in 1940. A law on the status of Jews of that year, followed by another in 1941, purged Jews from employment in administrative, civil service and judicial posts, from most professions and even from the entertainment industry – restricting them, mostly, to menial jobs. Vichy officials detained some 75,000 Jews who were then handed over to the Germans; approximated 72,500 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust in France. In Germany, following World War I, Nazism arose as a political movement incorporating racially antisemitic ideas, expressed by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf. The Nazi's blamed Jews for all of Germany's ills - defeat in WWI, the Versailles Treaty, inflation, the Great Depression, etc. They demonized Jews as the driving force behind both international Marxism and capitalism. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazi regime sought the systematic exclusion of Jews from national life. The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 declared that only those of "German or related blood" could be citizens, thus stripping Jews, and later Roma and Black people, of their German citizenship and political rights. The Law for the Protection of German Blood outlawed marriage or sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews. The Nazis employed mass media propaganda to dehumanize Jews, even depicting them as rats and other vermin. This proved vital in motivating the later extermination of Jews and ensuring the passive consent of millions of bystanders. Mass violence against the Jews was encouraged by the Nazi regime. On the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht, the regime sanctioned the killing of Jews, the destruction of property and the torching of synagogues. Already prior to WWII, German authorities rounded up thousands of Jews for the first concentration camps, while many other German Jews fled the country. Initially, the Nazis sought to get rid of Jews by forcing them to emigrate, but most countries, including the United States, Great Britain, and France, refused to ease their immigration restrictions to accept more Jews, with racial prejudice playing a major role. In 1940 the Nazis drew up a plan to deport Jews to Madagascar, something France and Poland had also explored before the war, but this proved to be infeasible. As Nazi control extended during World War II, antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were brought to occupied Europe, often building on local antisemitic traditions. In the German-occupied Poland, where over three million Jews had lived before the war in the largest Jewish population in Europe, Polish Jews were forced into newly established prison ghettos in 1940, including the Warsaw Ghetto for almost half million Jews.[page needed] Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, a systematic campaign of mass murder in that country was conducted against Soviet Jews (including former Polish Jews from Soviet-annexed territories) by Nazi death squads called the Einsatzgruppen, murdering over one million Jews and marking a turn from persecution to extermination. In all, some six million Jews, about half of them from Poland, were murdered outright or indirectly through starvation, disease and overwork in German and collaborationist captivity between 1941 and 1945 in the genocide known as the Holocaust. On 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, deputed to find a "final solution to the Jewish question", chaired the Wannsee Conference at which all the ethnic Jews and many of part-Jews resident in Europe and North Africa were marked to be exterminated. To implement this plan, the Jews from Poland, Germany, and various other countries would be transported to purpose-built extermination camps set up by Nazis in the occupied Poland and in Germany-annexed territories, where they were mostly murdered in gas chambers immediately upon their arrival. These camps, located at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Bełżec, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka, accounted for about half of the total number of Jewish victims of Nazism. Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews migrated to America's shores, the bulk of them were from Eastern Europe. Where before 1900, American Jews never amounted to even 1 percent of America's total population, by 1930 Jews formed about 3½ percent of America's total population. This dramatic increase in the size of America's Jewish community and the upward mobility of some Jews was accompanied by a resurgence of antisemitism.[citation needed] In the first half of the 20th century, Jews in the United States faced discrimination in employment, in access to residential and resort areas, in membership in clubs and organizations and in tightened quotas on Jewish enrollment and teaching positions in colleges and universities. Some sources state that the conviction (and later the lynching) of Leo Frank, which turned a spotlight on antisemitism in the United States, also led to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League in October 1913. However, Abraham H. Foxman, the organization's National Director, disputes this claim, stating that American Jews simply needed to found an institution that would combat antisemitism. The social tensions which existed during this period also led to renewed support for the Ku Klux Klan, which had been inactive since 1870.[page needed] Antisemitism in the United States reached its peak during the 1920s and 1930s. The pioneering automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent. The pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh and many other prominent Americans led the America First Committee in opposing any American involvement in the new war in Europe. However, America First's leaders avoided saying or doing anything that would make them and their organization appear to be antisemitic and for this reason, they voted to drop Henry Ford as an America First member. Lindbergh gave a speech in Des Moines, Iowa in which he expressed the decidedly Ford-like view that: "The three most important groups which have been pressing this country towards war are the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt Administration." In his diary Lindbergh wrote: "We must limit to a reasonable amount the Jewish influence... Whenever the Jewish percentage of the total population becomes too high, a reaction seems to invariably occur. It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country." In the late 1930s, the German American Bund held parades which featured Nazi uniforms and flags with swastikas alongside American flags. At Madison Square Garden in 1939, some 20,000 people listened to the Bund leader Fritz Julius Kuhn as he criticized President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld" and calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal". Because he espoused a belief in the existence of a Bolshevik–Jewish conspiracy in America, Kuhn and his activities were scrutinized by the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and when the United States entered World War II most of the Bund's members were placed in internment camps, and some of them were deported at the end of the war. Meanwhile, the United States government did not allow the MS St. Louis to enter the United States in 1939 because it was full of Jewish refugees. During race riot in Detroit in 1943, Jewish businesses were targeted for looting and burning. Antisemitism in the Soviet Union reached a peak in 1948–1953 and culminated in the so-called Doctors' Plot that could have been a precursor to a general purge and a mass deportation of the Soviet Jews as nation. The country's leading Yiddish-writing poets and writers were tortured and executed in a campaign against the so-called rootless cosmopolitans. The excesses largely ended with the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union. However, the discrimination against Jews had continued, leading to a mass emigration once it was allowed in the 1970s, followed by another during and after the breakup of the Soviet Union, mostly to Israel. The Kielce pogrom and the Kraków pogrom in communist Poland were examples further incidents of antisemitic attitudes and violence in the Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. A common theme behind the anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war period in Poland were blood libel rumours. Poland's later "March events" of 1967–1968 was a state anti-Jewish (officially anti-Zionist) political campaign involving the suppression of the dissident movement and a power struggle within the Polish communist party against the background of the Six-Day War and the Soviet Union's and the Eastern Bloc's new radically anti-Israeli policy in support of socialist Arab countries. Both of these waves of antisemitism in Poland resulted in the emigration of most of the country's Holocaust survivors during the late 1940s and in 1968, mostly to either Israel or the United States. During the early 1980s, isolationists on the far right made overtures to anti-war activists on the left in the United States to join forces against government policies in areas where they shared concerns. This was mainly in the area of civil liberties, opposition to United States military intervention overseas and opposition to U.S. support for Israel. As they interacted, some of the classic right-wing antisemitic scapegoating conspiracy theories began to seep into progressive circles, including stories about how a "New World Order", also called the "Shadow Government" or "The Octopus", was manipulating world governments. Antisemitic conspiracism was "peddled aggressively" by right-wing groups. Some on the left adopted the rhetoric, which it has been argued, was made possible by their lack of knowledge of the history of fascism and its use of "scapegoating, reductionist and simplistic solutions, demagoguery, and a conspiracy theory of history." The Crown Heights riots of 1991 were a violent expression of tensions within a very poor urban community, pitting African American residents against followers of Hassidic Judaism. Towards the end of 1990, as the movement against the Gulf War began to build, a number of far-right and antisemitic groups sought out alliances with left-wing anti-war coalitions, who began to speak openly about a "Jewish lobby" that was encouraging the United States to invade the Middle East. This idea evolved into conspiracy theories about a "Zionist-occupied government" (ZOG), which has been seen as equivalent to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Argentina, some antisemitism emerged in the form of the association of Jews to psychoanalysis beliefs during the 1930s and 40s. Psychoanalysis was invented by Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud, whose ideas were often associated with Jews and Jewishness. Prominent Catholic priests, such as Virgilio Filippo, attacked Freudian psychoanalysis by claiming that it was an ideology created to suppress Argentine society and undermine the Catholic Church. Filippo viewed psychoanalysis as part of a Jewish plan to dominate by sexual means. Filippo linked Freud's Jewishness to his sexual perversion as "related to the sexual perversion of the Jewish physiological constitution." Antisemitism was also prevalent in texts from Christian writers; a popular one being Gustavo Martínez Zuviría or "Hugo Wast." Writers like Huge Wast wrote political essays to "expose" Jews for their destructive force in Argentina and in the world. Wast wrote a two-part novel titled Kahal (Congregation) and Oro (Gold), where the Kahal plot was inspired by conspiracy theories and Jewish tropes of Jews taking control of the economy, media, culture, and government, much like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Filippo's antisemitism was a combination of traditional Catholic antisemitism, like Hugo Wast's work, and racial antisemitism based on the ideas of Freudian psychoanalysis and its connection to Jewish biological makeup. While Islamic antisemitism has increased in the wake of the Arab–Israeli conflict, there were riots against Jews in Middle Eastern countries prior to the foundation of Israel, including unrest in Casablanca, Shiraz and Fez in the 1910s, massacres in Jerusalem, Jaffa and broadly throughout Palestine in the 1920s, pogroms in Algeria, Turkey and Palestine in the 1930s, as well as attacks on the Jews of Iraq and Tunisia in the 1940s. As Palestinian Arab leader Amin al-Husseini decided to make an alliance with Hitler's Germany during World War II, 180 Jews were killed and 700 Jews were injured in the Nazi-inspired riots of 1941 which are known as the Farhud. Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the Holocaust. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were discriminated against and used as slaves until the Axis defeat. In 1945, hundreds of Jews were injured during violent demonstrations in Egypt and Jewish property was vandalized and looted. In November 1945, 130 Jews were killed during a pogrom in Tripoli. In December 1947, shortly after the UN Partition Plan, Arab rioting resulted in hundreds of Jewish casualties in Aleppo, including 75 dead. In Aden, 87 Jews were killed and 120 injured. A mob of Muslim sailors looted Jewish homes and shops in Manama. During 1948 there were further riots against Jews in Tripoli, Cairo, Oujda and Jerada. As the first Arab–Israeli War came to an end in 1949, a grenade attack against the Menarsha Synagogue of Damascus claimed a dozen lives and thirty injured. The 1967 Six-Day War led to further persecution against Jews in the Arab world, prompting an increase in the Jewish exodus that began after Israel was established.[better source needed] Over the following years, Jewish population in Arab countries decreased from 856,000 in 1948 to 25,870 in 2009 as a result of emigration, mostly to Israel. 21st century The first years of the 21st century have seen an upsurge of antisemitism. Several authors such as Robert S. Wistrich, Phyllis Chesler, and Jonathan Sacks argue that this is antisemitism of a new type stemming from Islamists, which they call new antisemitism. Blood libel stories have appeared numerous times in the state-sponsored media of a number of Arab nations, on Arab television shows, and on websites. Other scholars, such as Antony Lerman, contest the notion of new antisemitism. In 2004, the United Kingdom set up an all-Parliamentary inquiry into antisemitism, which published its findings in 2006. The inquiry stated that: "Until recently, the prevailing opinion both within the Jewish community and beyond [had been] that antisemitism had receded to the point that it existed only on the margins of society." However, it found a reversal of this progress since 2000 and aimed to investigate the problem, identify the sources of contemporary antisemitism and make recommendations to improve the situation. A 2008 report by the U.S. State Department found that there was an increase in antisemitism across the world, and that both old and new expressions of antisemitism persist. A 2012 report by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor also noted a continued global increase in antisemitism, and found that Holocaust denial and opposition to Israeli policy at times was used to promote or justify antisemitism. In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League released the results of a survey of 58,000 adults from 103 countries taken in 2024, estimating that 2.2 billion people, representing 46% of the world's adults, harbor deep antisemitic attitudes. Amid the Gaza war, federal law enforcement in the United States reported a spike in antisemitic harassment, threats and violence. A man was charged for leaving an antisemitic voicemail containing death threats against Senator Jacky Rosen. In late October, a group of prominent US law firms signed a letter condemning "reports of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assaults on college campuses, including rallies calling for the death of Jews and the elimination of the State of Israel" urging universities to take action. Antisemitism in the English-speaking world William D. Rubenstein, a respected author and historian, outlines the presence of antisemitism in the English-speaking world in one of his essays with the same title. In the essay, he explains that there are relatively low levels of antisemitism in the English-speaking world, particularly in Britain and the United States, because of the values associated with Protestantism, the rise of capitalism, and the establishment of constitutional governments that protect civil liberties. Rubenstein does not argue that the treatment of Jews was ideal in these countries, rather he argues that there has been less overt antisemitism in the English-speaking world due to political, ideological, and social structures. Essentially, English-speaking nations experienced lower levels of antisemitism because their liberal and constitutional frameworks limited the organized, violent expression of antisemitism. In his essay, Rubinstein tries to contextualize the reduction of the Jewish population that led to a period of reduced antisemitism: "All Jews were expelled from England in 1290, the first time Jews had been expelled en masse from a European country". As mentioned above, Protestantism was a major factor that curbed antisemitism in England beginning in the sixteenth century. This assertion is supported by the fact that the number of reported instances in which Jews were killed in England was significantly higher prior to the birth of Protestantism albeit this was also affected by the number of resident Jews. Protestants were comparatively more understanding of Jews relative to Catholics and other religious groups. One possible reason as to why Protestant groups were more accepting of Jews was the fact that they preferred the Old Testament rather than the New Testament, so their doctrines shared both content and narrative with Jewish teachings. Rubenstein attests that another reason as to why "most of these [Protestants] were predisposed to be sympathetic to the Jews" was because they often "view[ed] themselves, like the biblical Hebrews, as a chosen group that had entered into a direct covenant with God." Lastly, Protestantism's anti-Catholic bend contributed to lower levels of antisemitism: "All of these groups were profoundly hostile to Catholicism. Anti-Catholicism, at both the elite and mass levels, became a key theme in Britain, tending to push antisemitism aside." Overall, the emergence of Protestantism lessened the severity of antisemitism through its use of the Old Testament and its anti-Catholic sentiment. In post-Napoleonic England, when there was a notable absence of Jews, Britain removed bans on "usury and moneylending," and Rubenstein attests that London and Liverpool became economic trading hubs which bolstered England's status as an economic powerhouse. Jews were often associated with being the moneymakers and financial bodies in continental Europe, so it is significant that the English were able to claim responsibility for the country's financial growth and not attribute it to Jews. It is also significant that because Jews were not in the spotlight financially, it took a lot of the anger away from them, and as such, antisemitism was somewhat muted in England. It is said that Jews did not rank among the "economic elite of many British cities" in the 19th century. Again, the significance in this is that British Protestants and non-Jews felt less threatened by Jews because they were not imposing on their prosperity and were not responsible for the economic achievements of their nation. Albert Lindemann also proposes in the introduction to his book Antisemitism: A History that Jews "assumed social positions, such as moneylending, that were inherently precarious and tension creating." Lindemann believes that moneylending is inevitably riddled with tension, so as long as Jews were moneylenders, they would always be at the center of the problem and synonymous with fraught financial affairs.[citation needed] The third major factor which contributed to the lessening of antisemitism in Britain was the establishment of a constitutional government, something that was later adopted and bolstered in the United States. A constitutional government is one which has a written document that outlines the powers of government in an attempt to balance and protect civil rights. After the English Civil War, the Protectorate (1640–60) and the Glorious Revolution (1688), parliament was established to make laws that protected the rights of British citizens. The Bill of Rights specifically outlined laws to protect British civil liberties as well. Thus, it is not surprising that having a constitutional government with liberal principles minimized, to some extent, antisemitism in Britain. In further attempts to minimize antisemitism within government, the United States' Declaration of Independence embraced the liberal principles that were previously put forth in England and inspired the formation of a republic that had executive, judicial, and legislative powers and even a law that served to "forbid the establishment of any religion or any official religious test for office holding." Having a government that respected and protected civil liberties, especially those pertaining to religious liberties, reduced blatant antisemitism by constitutionally protecting the right to practice different faiths. These sentiments go back to the first President of the United States, George Washington, who asserted his belief in religious inclusion. Rubinstein believes that though instances of antisemitism definitely existed in Britain and America, the moderation of antisemitism was limited in English-speaking countries largely because of political and social ideologies that come with a constitutional government. In addition to being low in the United States and Britain, antisemitism was also low in other English-speaking countries such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Australia has had a historically positive attitude towards Jews and as a result, it had "remarkably little overt antisemitism at any point." Similarly, Ireland and New Zealand also experienced a lower presence of antisemitism. This is not to say that English-speaking countries have less antisemitic sentiment because their populations speak English, instead, the ideologies that often exist in English-speaking countries affect their acceptance of Jews. While antisemitism tended to be low in English-speaking regions of Canada, it was higher in Quebec where the native language is French. Quebec has a "long history of blaring antisemitism, enunciated by French-speaking nationalists steeped in the most extreme forms of Catholic hostility towards Jews." This is important because other English-speaking parts of Canada were more tolerant of Jews than its non-English speaking parts were, which suggests a correlation between lingual diversity and the level of Jewish hate. Additionally, it seems that Quebec's firm Catholic hostility towards Jews contributed to local antisemitic behavior. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging, and because most of Earth's plate boundaries are underwater, most volcanoes are found underwater. For example, a mid-ocean ridge, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates whereas the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates. Volcanoes resulting from divergent tectonic activity are usually non-explosive whereas those resulting from convergent tectonic activity cause violent eruptions. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's plates, such as in the East African Rift, the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field, and the Rio Grande rift in North America. Volcanism away from plate boundaries most likely arises from upwelling diapirs from the core–mantle boundary called mantle plumes, 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) deep within Earth. This results in hotspot volcanism or intraplate volcanism, in which the plume may cause thinning of the crust and result in a volcanic island chain due to the continuous movement of the tectonic plate, of which the Hawaiian hotspot is an example. Volcanoes are usually not created at transform tectonic boundaries where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes, based on their frequency of eruption or volcanism, are referred to as either active, dormant, or extinct. Active volcanoes have a history of volcanism and are likely to erupt again, while extinct ones are not capable of eruption at all as they have no magma source. "Dormant" volcanoes have not erupted in a long time – generally accepted as since the start of the Holocene, about 12,000 years ago – but may erupt again. However, dormant volcanoes are technically considered to be seismically "active". These categories aren't entirely uniform; they may overlap for certain examples. Large eruptions can affect atmospheric temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the Sun and cool Earth's troposphere. Historically, large volcanic eruptions have been followed by volcanic winters which have caused catastrophic famines. Other planets besides Earth have volcanoes. For example, volcanoes are very numerous on Venus. Mars has significant volcanoes. In 2009, a paper was published suggesting a new definition for the word 'volcano' that includes processes such as cryovolcanism. It suggested that a volcano be defined as 'an opening on a planet or moon's surface from which magma, as defined for that body, and/or magmatic gas is erupted.' This article mainly covers volcanoes on Earth. See § Volcanoes on other celestial bodies and cryovolcano for more information. Etymology and terminology The word volcano (UK: /vɒlˈkeɪnəʊ/; US: /vɑːlˈkeɪnoʊ/) originates from the early 17th century, derived from the Italian name Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy, which in turn comes from the Latin name Volcānus or Vulcānus, referring to Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology. The set of processes and phenomena involved in volcanic activity is called volcanism [early 19th century: from volcano + -ism]. The study of volcanism and volcanoes is called volcanology [mid-19th century: from volcano + -logy], sometimes spelled vulcanology. Plate tectonics According to the theory of plate tectonics, Earth's lithosphere, its rigid outer shell, is broken into sixteen larger and several smaller plates. These move continuously at a slow pace, due to convection in the underlying ductile mantle, and most volcanic activity on Earth takes place along plate boundaries, where plates are converging (and lithosphere is being destroyed) or are diverging (and new lithosphere is being created). During the development of geological theory, certain concepts that allowed the grouping of volcanoes in time, place, structure and composition have developed that ultimately have had to be explained in the theory of plate tectonics. For example, some volcanoes are polygenetic with more than one period of activity during their history; other volcanoes that become extinct after erupting exactly once are monogenetic (meaning "one life") and such volcanoes are often grouped together in a geographical region. At the mid-ocean ridges, two tectonic plates diverge from one another as hot mantle rock creeps upwards beneath the thinned oceanic crust. The decrease of pressure in the rising mantle rock leads to adiabatic expansion and the partial melting of the rock, causing volcanism and creating new oceanic crust. Most divergent plate boundaries are at the bottom of the oceans, and so most volcanic activity on Earth is submarine, forming new seafloor. Black smokers (also known as deep sea vents) are evidence of this kind of volcanic activity. Where the mid-oceanic ridge is above sea level, volcanic islands are formed, such as Iceland. Subduction zones are places where two plates, usually an oceanic plate and a continental plate, collide. The oceanic plate subducts (dives beneath the continental plate), forming a deep ocean trench just offshore. In a process called flux melting, water released from the subducting plate lowers the melting temperature of the overlying mantle wedge, thus creating magma. This magma tends to be extremely viscous because of its high silica content, so it often does not reach the surface but cools and solidifies at depth. When it does reach the surface, however, a volcano is formed. Thus subduction zones are bordered by chains of volcanoes called volcanic arcs. Typical examples are the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire, such as the Cascade Volcanoes or the Japanese Archipelago, or the eastern islands of Indonesia. Hotspots are volcanic areas thought to be formed by mantle plumes, which are hypothesized to be columns of hot material rising from the core-mantle boundary. As with mid-ocean ridges, the rising mantle rock experiences decompression melting which generates large volumes of magma. Because tectonic plates move across mantle plumes, each volcano becomes inactive as it drifts off the plume, and new volcanoes are created where the plate advances over the plume. The Hawaiian Islands are thought to have been formed in such a manner, as has the Snake River Plain, with the Yellowstone Caldera being part of the North American plate currently above the Yellowstone hotspot. However, the mantle plume hypothesis has been questioned. Sustained upwelling of hot mantle rock can develop under the interior of a continent and lead to rifting. Early stages of rifting are characterized by flood basalts and may progress to the point where a tectonic plate is completely split. A divergent plate boundary then develops between the two halves of the split plate. However, rifting often fails to completely split the continental lithosphere (such as in an aulacogen), and failed rifts are characterized by volcanoes that erupt unusual alkali lava or carbonatites. Examples include the volcanoes of the East African Rift. Volcanic features A volcano needs a reservoir of molten magma (e.g. a magma chamber), a conduit to allow magma to rise through the crust, and a vent to allow the magma to escape above the surface as lava. The erupted volcanic material (lava and tephra) that is deposited around the vent is known as a volcanic edifice, typically a volcanic cone or mountain. The most common perception of a volcano is of a conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit; however, this describes just one of the many types of volcano. The features of volcanoes are varied. The structure and behaviour of volcanoes depend on several factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater while others have landscape features such as massive plateaus. Vents that issue volcanic material (including lava and ash) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can develop anywhere on the landform and may give rise to smaller cones such as Puʻu ʻŌʻō on a flank of Kīlauea in Hawaii. Volcanic craters are not always at the top of a mountain or hill and may be filled with lakes such as with Lake Taupō in New Zealand. Some volcanoes can be low-relief landform features, with the potential to be hard to recognize as such and be obscured by geological processes. Other types of volcano include mud volcanoes, which are structures often not associated with known magmatic activity; and cryovolcanoes (or ice volcanoes), particularly on some moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes except when the mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano. Volcanic fissure vents are generally found at diverging plate boundaries, they are flat, linear fractures through which basaltic lava emerges. These kinds of volcanoes are non-explosive and the basaltic lava tends to have a low viscosity and solidifies slowly leading to a gentle sloping basaltic lava plateau. They often relate or constitute shield volcanoes Shield volcanoes, so named for their broad, shield-like profiles, are formed by the eruption of low-viscosity basaltic or andesitic lava that can flow a great distance from a vent. They generally do not explode catastrophically but are characterized by relatively gentle effusive eruptions. Since low-viscosity magma is typically low in silica, shield volcanoes are more common in oceanic than continental settings. The Hawaiian volcanic chain is a series of shield cones, and they are common in Iceland, as well. Olympus Mons, an extinct martian shield volcano is the largest known volcano in the Solar System. Lava domes, also called dome volcanoes, have steep convex sides built by slow eruptions of highly viscous lava, for example, rhyolite. They are sometimes formed within the crater of a previous volcanic eruption, as in the case of Mount St. Helens, but can also form independently, as in the case of Lassen Peak. Like stratovolcanoes, they can produce violent, explosive eruptions, but the lava generally does not flow far from the originating vent. Cryptodomes are formed when viscous lava is forced upward causing the surface to bulge. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was an example; lava beneath the surface of the mountain created an upward bulge, which later collapsed down the north side of the mountain. Cinder cones result from eruptions of mostly small pieces of scoria and pyroclastics (both resemble cinders, hence the name of this volcano type) that build up around the vent. These can be relatively short-lived eruptions that produce a cone-shaped hill perhaps 30 to 400 metres (100 to 1,300 ft) high. Most cinder cones erupt only once and some may be found in monogenetic volcanic fields that may include other features that form when magma comes into contact with water such as maar explosion craters and tuff rings. Cinder cones may form as flank vents on larger volcanoes, or occur on their own. Parícutin in Mexico and Sunset Crater in Arizona are examples of cinder cones. In New Mexico, Caja del Rio is a volcanic field of over 60 cinder cones. Based on satellite images, it has been suggested that cinder cones might occur on other terrestrial bodies in the Solar system too; on the surface of Mars and the Moon. Stratovolcanoes are tall conical mountains composed of lava flows and tephra in alternate layers, the strata that gives rise to the name. They are also known as composite volcanoes because they are created from multiple structures during different kinds of eruptions; the main conduit bringing magma to the surface branches into multiple secondary conduits and occasional laccoliths or sills, the branching conduits may form parasitic cones on the flanks of the main cone. Classic examples include Mount Fuji in Japan, Mayon Volcano in the Philippines, and Mount Vesuvius and Stromboli in Italy. Ash produced by the explosive eruption of stratovolcanoes has historically posed the greatest volcanic hazard to civilizations. The lavas of stratovolcanoes are higher in silica, and therefore much more viscous, than lavas from shield volcanoes. High-silica lavas also tend to contain more dissolved gas. The combination is deadly, promoting explosive eruptions that produce great quantities of ash, as well as pyroclastic surges like the one that destroyed the city of Saint-Pierre in Martinique in 1902. They are also steeper than shield volcanoes, with slopes of 30–35° compared to slopes of generally 5–10°, and their loose tephra are material for dangerous lahars. Large pieces of tephra are called volcanic bombs. Big bombs can measure more than 1.2 metres (4 ft) across and weigh several tons. A supervolcano is defined as a volcano that has experienced one or more eruptions that produced over 1,000 cubic kilometres (240 cu mi) of volcanic deposits in a single explosive event. Such eruptions occur when a very large magma chamber full of gas-rich, silicic magma is emptied in a catastrophic caldera-forming eruption. Ash flow tuffs emplaced by such eruptions are the only volcanic product with volumes rivalling those of flood basalts. Supervolcano eruptions, while the most dangerous type, are very rare; four are known from the last million years, and about 60 historical VEI 8 eruptions have been identified in the geologic record over millions of years. A supervolcano can produce devastation on a continental scale, and severely cool global temperatures for many years after the eruption due to the huge volumes of sulfur and ash released into the atmosphere. Because of the enormous area they cover, and subsequent concealment under vegetation and glacial deposits, supervolcanoes can be difficult to identify in the geologic record without careful geological mapping. Known examples include Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park and Valles Caldera in New Mexico (both western United States); Lake Taupō in New Zealand; Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia; and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Volcanoes that, though large, are not large enough to be called supervolcanoes, may also form calderas (collapsed crater) in the same way. There may be active or dormant cones inside of the caldera or even a lake, such lakes are called Volcanogenic lakes, or simply, volcanic lakes. Submarine volcanoes are common features of the ocean floor. Volcanic activity during the Holocene Epoch has been documented at only 119 submarine volcanoes, but there may be more than one million geologically young submarine volcanoes on the ocean floor. In shallow water, active volcanoes disclose their presence by blasting steam and rocky debris high above the ocean's surface. In the deep ocean basins, the tremendous weight of the water prevents the explosive release of steam and gases; however, submarine eruptions can be detected by hydrophones and by the discoloration of water because of volcanic gases. Pillow lava is a common eruptive product of submarine volcanoes and is characterized by thick sequences of discontinuous pillow-shaped masses which form underwater. Even large submarine eruptions may not disturb the ocean surface, due to the rapid cooling effect and increased buoyancy in water (as compared to air), which often causes volcanic vents to form steep pillars on the ocean floor. Hydrothermal vents are common near these volcanoes, and some support peculiar ecosystems based on chemotrophs feeding on dissolved minerals. Over time, the formations created by submarine volcanoes may become so large that they break the ocean surface as new islands or floating pumice rafts. In May and June 2018, a multitude of seismic signals were detected by earthquake monitoring agencies all over the world. They took the form of unusual humming sounds, and some of the signals detected in November of that year had a duration of up to 20 minutes. An oceanographic research campaign in May 2019 showed that the previously mysterious humming noises were caused by the formation of a submarine volcano off the coast of Mayotte. Subglacial volcanoes develop underneath ice caps. They are made up of lava plateaus capping extensive pillow lavas and palagonite. These volcanoes are also called table mountains, tuyas, or (in Iceland) mobergs. Very good examples of this type of volcano can be seen in Iceland and in British Columbia. The origin of the term comes from Tuya Butte, which is one of the several tuyas in the area of the Tuya River and Tuya Range in northern British Columbia. Tuya Butte was the first such landform analysed and so its name has entered the geological literature for this kind of volcanic formation. The Tuya Mountains Provincial Park was recently established to protect this unusual landscape, which lies north of Tuya Lake and south of the Jennings River near the boundary with the Yukon Territory. Hydrothermal features, for example geysers, fumaroles, mud pools, mud volcanoes, hot springs and acidic hot springs involve water as well as geothermal or magmatic activity. Such features are common around volcanoes and are often indicative of volcanism. Mud volcanoes or mud domes are conical structures created by eruption of liquids and gases, particularly mud (slurries), water and gases, although several activities may contribute. The largest mud volcanoes are 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in diameter and reach 700 metres (2,300 ft) high. Mud volcanoes can be seen off the shore of Indonesia, on the island of Baratang, in Balochistan and in central Asia. Fumaroles are vents on the surface from which hot steam and volcanic gases erupt due to the presence of superheated groundwater, these may indicate volcanic activity. Fumaroles erupting sulfurous gases are also often called solfataras. Geysers are springs which will occasionally erupt and discharge hot water and steam. Geysers may indicate ongoing magmatism, water underground is heated by hot rocks and steam pressure builds up before being released along with a jet of hot water. Almost half of all active geysers are present in Yellowstone National Park, US. Erupted material The material that is expelled in a volcanic eruption can be classified into three types: The concentrations of different volcanic gases can vary considerably from one volcano to the next. Water vapour is typically the most abundant volcanic gas, followed by carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Other principal volcanic gases include hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen fluoride. A large number of minor and trace gases are also found in volcanic emissions, for example hydrogen, carbon monoxide, halocarbons, organic compounds, and volatile metal chlorides. The form and style of an eruption of a volcano is largely determined by the composition of the lava it erupts. The viscosity (how fluid the lava is) and the amount of dissolved gas are the most important characteristics of magma, and both are largely determined by the amount of silica in the magma. Magma rich in silica is much more viscous than silica-poor magma, and silica-rich magma also tends to contain more dissolved gases. Lava can be broadly classified into four different compositions: Mafic lava flows show two varieties of surface texture: ʻAʻa (pronounced [ˈʔaʔa]) and pāhoehoe ([paːˈho.eˈho.e]), both Hawaiian words. ʻAʻa is characterized by a rough, clinkery surface and is the typical texture of cooler basalt lava flows. Pāhoehoe is characterized by its smooth and often ropey or wrinkly surface and is generally formed from more fluid lava flows. Pāhoehoe flows are sometimes observed to transition to ʻaʻa flows as they move away from the vent, but never the reverse. More silicic lava flows take the form of block lava, where the flow is covered with angular, vesicle-poor blocks. Rhyolitic flows typically consist largely of obsidian. Tephra is made when magma inside the volcano is blown apart by the rapid expansion of hot volcanic gases. Magma commonly explodes as the gas dissolved in it comes out of solution as the pressure decreases when it flows to the surface. These violent explosions produce particles of material that can then fly from the volcano. Solid particles smaller than 2 mm in diameter (sand-sized or smaller) are called volcanic ash. Tephra and other volcaniclastics (shattered volcanic material) make up more of the volume of many volcanoes than do lava flows. Volcaniclastics may have contributed as much as a third of all sedimentation in the geologic record. The production of large volumes of tephra is characteristic of explosive volcanism. Through natural processes, mainly erosion, so much of the solidified erupted material that makes up the mantle of a volcano may be stripped away that its inner anatomy becomes apparent. Using the metaphor of biological anatomy, such a process is called "dissection". When the volcano is extinct, a plug forms on its vent, over time due to erosion, the volcanic cone slowly erodes away leaving the resistant lava plug intact. Cinder Hill, a feature of Mount Bird on Ross Island, Antarctica, is a prominent example of a dissected volcano. Volcanoes that were, on a geological timescale, recently active, such as for example Mount Kaimon in southern Kyūshū, Japan, tend to be undissected. Devils Tower in Wyoming is a famous example of exposed volcanic plug. Volcanic eruptions As of December 2022[update], the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program database of volcanic eruptions in the Holocene Epoch (the last 11,700 years) lists 9,901 confirmed eruptions from 859 volcanoes. The database also lists 1,113 uncertain eruptions and 168 discredited eruptions for the same time interval. Eruption styles are broadly divided into magmatic, phreatomagmatic (hydrovolcanic), and phreatic eruptions. The intensity of explosive volcanism is expressed using the volcanic explosivity index (VEI), which ranges from 0 for Hawaiian-type eruptions to 8 for supervolcanic eruptions: Volcanic activity Volcanoes vary greatly in their level of activity, with individual volcanic systems having an eruption recurrence ranging from several times a year to once in tens of thousands of years. Volcanoes are informally described as erupting, active, dormant, or extinct, but the definitions of these terms are not entirely uniform among volcanologists. The level of activity of most volcanoes falls upon a graduated spectrum, with much overlap between categories, and does not always fit neatly into only one of these three separate categories. The USGS defines a volcano as "erupting" whenever the ejection of magma from any point on the volcano is visible, including visible magma still contained within the walls of the summit crater. While there is no international consensus among volcanologists on how to define an active volcano, the USGS defines a volcano as active whenever subterranean indicators, such as earthquake swarms, ground inflation, or unusually high levels of carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide are present. The USGS defines a dormant volcano as any volcano that is not showing any signs of unrest such as earthquake swarms, ground swelling, or excessive noxious gas emissions, but which shows signs that it could yet become active again. Many dormant volcanoes have not erupted for thousands of years, but have still shown signs that they may be likely to erupt again in the future. Technically, any volcano that is dormant is also considered to be geologically "active". In an article justifying the re-classification of Alaska's Mount Edgecumbe volcano from "dormant" to "active", volcanologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory pointed out that the term "dormant" in reference to volcanoes has been deprecated over the past few decades and that "[t]he term "dormant volcano" is so little used and undefined in modern volcanology that the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes (2000) does not contain it in the glossaries or index", however the USGS still widely employs the term. Previously a volcano was often considered to be extinct if there were no written records of its activity. Such a generalization is inconsistent with observation and deeper study, as has occurred recently with the unexpected eruption of the Chaitén volcano in 2008. Modern volcanic activity monitoring techniques, and improvements in the modelling of the factors that produce eruptions, have helped the understanding of why volcanoes may remain dormant for a long time, and then become unexpectedly active again. The potential for eruptions, and their style, depend mainly upon the state of the magma storage system under the volcano, the eruption trigger mechanism and its timescale.: 95 For example, the Yellowstone volcano has a repose/recharge period of around 700,000 years, and Toba of around 380,000 years. Vesuvius was described by Roman writers as having been covered with gardens and vineyards before its unexpected eruption of 79 CE, which destroyed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Accordingly, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between an extinct volcano and a dormant (inactive) one. Long volcano dormancy is known to decrease awareness.: 96 Pinatubo was an inconspicuous volcano, unknown to most people in the surrounding areas, and initially not seismically monitored before its unanticipated and catastrophic eruption of 1991. Two other examples of volcanoes that were once thought to be extinct, before springing back into eruptive activity were the long-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat, thought to be extinct until activity resumed in 1995 (turning its capital Plymouth into a ghost town) and Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska, which, before its September 2006 eruption, had not erupted since before 8000 BCE. Another example is the Taftan volcano in southwestern Iran. This volcano was long thought by volcanologists to be extinct, with its last eruption having occurred an estimated 710,000 years ago. However, beginning around June 2023, the volcano began experiencing uplifting near its summit, suggesting that the volcano was dormant. Extinct volcanoes are those that scientists consider unlikely to erupt again because the volcano no longer has a magma supply. Examples of extinct volcanoes are many volcanoes on the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain in the Pacific Ocean (although some volcanoes at the eastern end of the chain are active), Hohentwiel in Germany, Shiprock in New Mexico, U.S., Capulin in New Mexico, U.S., Zuidwal volcano in the Netherlands, and many volcanoes in Italy such as Monte Vulture. Edinburgh Castle in Scotland is located atop an extinct volcano, which forms Castle Rock. Whether a volcano is truly extinct is often difficult to determine. Since "supervolcano" calderas can have eruptive lifespans sometimes measured in millions of years, a caldera that has not produced an eruption in tens of thousands of years may be considered dormant instead of extinct. An individual volcano in a monogenetic volcanic field can be extinct, but that does not mean a completely new volcano might not erupt close by with little or no warning, as its field may have an active magma supply. The three common popular classifications of volcanoes can be subjective and some volcanoes thought to have been extinct have erupted again. To help prevent people from falsely believing they are not at risk when living on or near a volcano, countries have adopted new classifications to describe the various levels and stages of volcanic activity. Some alert systems use different numbers or colours to designate the different stages. Other systems use colours and words. Some systems use a combination of both. Decade volcanoes The Decade Volcanoes are 16 volcanoes identified by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas. They are named Decade Volcanoes because the project was initiated as part of the United Nations-sponsored International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (the 1990s). The 16 current Decade Volcanoes are: The Deep Earth Carbon Degassing Project, an initiative of the Deep Carbon Observatory, monitors nine volcanoes, two of which are Decade volcanoes. The focus of the Deep Earth Carbon Degassing Project is to use Multi-Component Gas Analyzer System instruments to measure CO2/SO2 ratios in real-time and in high-resolution to allow detection of the pre-eruptive degassing of rising magmas, improving prediction of volcanic activity. Volcanoes and humans Volcanic eruptions pose a significant threat to human civilization. However, volcanic activity has also provided humans with important resources. There are many different types of volcanic eruptions and associated activity: phreatic eruptions (steam-generated eruptions), explosive eruptions of high-silica lava (e.g., rhyolite), effusive eruptions of low-silica lava (e.g., basalt), sector collapses, pyroclastic flows, lahars (debris flows) and volcanic gas emissions. These can pose a hazard to humans. Earthquakes, hot springs, fumaroles, mud pots and geysers often accompany volcanic activity. Volcanic gases can reach the stratosphere, where they form sulfuric acid aerosols that can reflect solar radiation and lower surface temperatures significantly. Sulfur dioxide from the eruption of Huaynaputina may have caused the Russian famine of 1601–1603. Chemical reactions of sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere can also damage the ozone layer, and acids such as hydrogen chloride (HCl) and hydrogen fluoride (HF) can fall to the ground as acid rain. Excessive fluoride salts from eruptions have poisoned livestock in Iceland on multiple occasions.: 39–58 Explosive volcanic eruptions release the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and thus provide a deep source of carbon for biogeochemical cycles. Ash thrown into the air by eruptions can present a hazard to aircraft, especially jet aircraft where the particles can be melted by the high operating temperature; the melted particles then adhere to the turbine blades and alter their shape, disrupting the operation of the turbine. This can cause major disruptions to air travel. A volcanic winter is thought to have taken place around 70,000 years ago after the supereruption of Lake Toba on Sumatra island in Indonesia. This may have created a population bottleneck that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today. Volcanic eruptions may have contributed to major extinction events, such as the End-Ordovician, Permian-Triassic, and Late Devonian mass extinctions. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora created global climate anomalies that became known as the "Year Without a Summer" because of the effect on North American and European weather. The freezing winter of 1740–41, which led to widespread famine in northern Europe, may also owe its origins to a volcanic eruption. Although volcanic eruptions pose considerable hazards to humans, past volcanic activity has created important economic resources. Tuff formed from volcanic ash is a relatively soft rock, and it has been used for construction since ancient times. The Romans often used tuff, which is abundant in Italy, for construction. The Rapa Nui people used tuff to make most of the moai statues in Easter Island. Volcanic ash and weathered basalt produce some of the most fertile soil in the world, rich in nutrients such as iron, magnesium, potassium, calcium, and phosphorus. Volcanic activity is responsible for emplacing valuable mineral resources, such as metal ores. It is accompanied by high rates of heat flow from Earth's interior. These can be tapped as geothermal power. Tourism associated with volcanoes is also a worldwide industry. Many volcanoes near human settlements are heavily monitored with the aim of providing adequate advance warnings of imminent eruptions to nearby populations. Also, a better modern-day understanding of volcanology has led to some better informed governmental and public responses to unanticipated volcanic activities. While the science of volcanology may not yet be capable of predicting the exact times and dates of eruptions far into the future, on suitably monitored volcanoes the monitoring of ongoing volcanic indicators is often capable of predicting imminent eruptions with advance warnings minimally of hours, and usually of days prior to any eruptions. The diversity of volcanoes and their complexities mean that eruption forecasts for the foreseeable future will be based on probability, and the application of risk management. Even then, some eruptions will have no useful warning. An example of this occurred in March 2017, when a tourist group was witnessing a presumed to be predictable Mount Etna eruption and the flowing lava came in contact with a snow accumulation causing a situational phreatic explosion causing injury to ten persons. Other types of significant eruptions are known to give useful warnings of only hours at the most by seismic monitoring. The recent demonstration of a magma chamber with repose times of tens of thousands of years, with potential for rapid recharge so potentially decreasing warning times, under the youngest volcano in central Europe, does not tell us if more careful monitoring will be useful. Scientists are known to perceive risk, with its social elements, differently from local populations and those that undertake social risk assessments on their behalf, so that both disruptive false alarms and retrospective blame, when disasters occur, will continue to happen.: 1–3 Thus in many cases, while volcanic eruptions may still cause major property destruction, the periodic large-scale loss of human life that was once associated with many volcanic eruptions, has recently been significantly reduced in areas where volcanoes are adequately monitored. This life-saving ability is derived via such volcanic-activity monitoring programs, through the greater abilities of local officials to facilitate timely evacuations based upon the greater modern-day knowledge of volcanism that is now available, and upon improved communications technologies such as cell phones. Such operations tend to provide enough time for humans to escape at least with their lives before a pending eruption. One example of such a recent successful volcanic evacuation was the Mount Pinatubo evacuation of 1991. This evacuation is believed to have saved 20,000 lives. In the case of Mount Etna, a 2021 review found 77 deaths due to eruptions since 1536 but none since 1987. Citizens who may be concerned about their own exposure to risk from nearby volcanic activity should familiarize themselves with the types of, and quality of, volcano monitoring and public notification procedures being employed by governmental authorities in their areas. Volcanoes on other celestial bodies Earth's Moon has no large volcanoes and no current volcanic activity, although recent evidence suggests it may still possess a partially molten core. However, the Moon does have many volcanic features such as maria (the darker patches seen on the Moon), rilles and domes. The planet Venus has a surface that is 90% basalt, indicating that volcanism played a major role in shaping its surface. The planet may have had a major global resurfacing event about 500 million years ago, from what scientists can tell from the density of impact craters on the surface. Lava flows are widespread and forms of volcanism not present on Earth occur as well. Changes in the planet's atmosphere and observations of lightning have been attributed to ongoing volcanic eruptions, although there is no confirmation of whether or not Venus is still volcanically active. However, radar sounding by the Magellan probe revealed evidence for comparatively recent volcanic activity at Venus's highest volcano Maat Mons, in the form of ash flows near the summit and on the northern flank. However, the interpretation of the flows as ash flows has been questioned. There are several extinct volcanoes on Mars, four of which are vast shield volcanoes far bigger than any on Earth. They include Arsia Mons, Ascraeus Mons, Hecates Tholus, Olympus Mons, and Pavonis Mons. These volcanoes have been extinct for many millions of years, but the European Mars Express spacecraft has found evidence that volcanic activity may have occurred on Mars in the recent past as well. Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active object in the Solar System because of tidal interaction with Jupiter. It is covered with volcanoes that erupt sulfur, sulfur dioxide and silicate rock, and as a result, Io is constantly being resurfaced. Its lavas are the hottest known anywhere in the Solar System, with temperatures exceeding 1,800 K (1,500 °C). In February 2001, the largest recorded volcanic eruptions in the Solar System occurred on Io. Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's Galilean moons, also appears to have an active volcanic system, except that its volcanic activity is entirely in the form of water, which freezes into ice on the frigid surface. This process is known as cryovolcanism, and is apparently most common on the moons of the outer planets of the Solar System. In 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft observed cryovolcanoes (ice volcanoes) on Triton, a moon of Neptune, and in 2005 the Cassini–Huygens probe photographed fountains of frozen particles erupting from Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The ejecta may be composed of water, liquid nitrogen, ammonia, dust, or methane compounds. Cassini–Huygens also found evidence of a methane-spewing cryovolcano on the Saturnian moon Titan, which is believed to be a significant source of the methane found in its atmosphere. It is theorized that cryovolcanism may also be present on the Kuiper Belt Object Quaoar. A 2010 study of the exoplanet COROT-7b, which was detected by transit in 2009, suggested that tidal heating from the host star very close to the planet and neighbouring planets could generate intense volcanic activity similar to that found on Io. History of volcano understanding Volcanoes are not distributed evenly over the Earth's surface but active ones with significant impact were encountered early in human history, evidenced by footprints of hominina found in East African volcanic ash dated at 3.66 million years old.: 104 The association of volcanoes with fire and disaster is found in many oral traditions and had religious and thus social significance before the first written record of concepts related to volcanoes. Examples are: (1) the stories in the Athabascan subcultures about humans living inside mountains and a woman who uses fire to escape from a mountain,: 135 (2) Pele's migration through the Hawarian island chain, ability to destroy forests and manifestations of the god's temper, and (3) the association in Javanese folklore of a king resident in Mount Merapi volcano and a queen resident at a beach 50 km (31 mi) away on what is now known to be an earthquake fault that interacts with that volcano. Many ancient accounts ascribe volcanic eruptions to supernatural causes, such as the actions of gods or demigods. The earliest known such example is a neolithic goddess at Çatalhöyük.: 203 The Ancient Greek god Hephaistos and the concepts of the underworld are aligned to volcanoes in that Greek culture. However, others proposed more natural (but still incorrect) causes of volcanic activity. In the fifth century BC, Anaxagoras proposed eruptions were caused by a great wind. By 65 CE, Seneca the Younger proposed combustion as the cause, an idea also adopted by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), who witnessed eruptions of Mount Etna and Stromboli, then visited the crater of Vesuvius and published his view of an Earth in Mundus Subterraneus with a central fire connected to numerous others depicting volcanoes as a type of safety valve. Edward Jorden, in his work on mineral waters, challenged this view; in 1632 he proposed sulfur "fermentation" as a heat source within Earth, Astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) believed volcanoes were ducts for Earth's tears.[better source needed] In 1650, René Descartes proposed the core of Earth was incandescent and, by 1785, the works of Decartes and others were synthesized into geology by James Hutton in his writings about igneous intrusions of magma. Lazzaro Spallanzani had demonstrated by 1794 that steam explosions could cause explosive eruptions and many geologists held this as the universal cause of explosive eruptions up to the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera which allowed in one event differentiation of the concurrent phreatomagmatic and hydrothermal eruptions from dry explosive eruption, of, as it turned out, a basalt dyke.: 16–18 : 4 Alfred Lacroix built upon his other knowledge with his studies on the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée, and by 1928 Arthur Holmes work had brought together the concepts of radioactive generation of heat, Earth's mantle structure, partial decompression melting of magma, and magma convection. This eventually led to the acceptance of plate tectonics. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents NumPy NumPy (pronounced /ˈnʌmpaɪ/ NUM-py) is a library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. The predecessor of NumPy, Numeric, was originally created by Jim Hugunin with contributions from several other developers. In 2005, Travis Oliphant created NumPy by incorporating features of the competing Numarray into Numeric, with extensive modifications. NumPy is open-source software and has many contributors. NumPy is fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS. History The Python programming language was not originally designed for numerical computing, but attracted the attention of the scientific and engineering community early on. In 1995 the special interest group (SIG) matrix-sig was founded with the aim of defining an array computing package; among its members was Python designer and maintainer Guido van Rossum, who extended Python's syntax (in particular the indexing syntax) to make array computing easier. An implementation of a matrix package was completed by Jim Fulton, then generalized[further explanation needed] by Jim Hugunin and called Numeric (also variously known as the "Numerical Python extensions" or "NumPy"), with influences from the APL family of languages, Basis, MATLAB, FORTRAN, S and S+, and others. Hugunin, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),: 10 joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in 1997 to work on JPython, leaving Paul Dubois of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to take over as maintainer.: 10 Other early contributors include David Ascher, Konrad Hinsen and Travis Oliphant.: 10 A new package called Numarray was written as a more flexible replacement for Numeric. Like Numeric, it too is now deprecated. Numarray had faster operations for large arrays, but was slower than Numeric on small ones, so for a time both packages were used in parallel for different use cases. The last version of Numeric (v24.2) was released on 11 November 2005, while the last version of numarray (v1.5.2) was released on 24 August 2006. There was a desire to get Numeric into the Python standard library, but Guido van Rossum decided that the code was not maintainable in its state then.[when?] In early 2005, NumPy developer Travis Oliphant wanted to unify the community around a single array package and ported Numarray's features to Numeric, releasing the result as NumPy 1.0 in 2006. This new project was part of SciPy. To avoid installing the large SciPy package just to get an array object, this new package was separated and called NumPy. Support for Python 3 was added in 2011 with NumPy version 1.5.0. In 2011, PyPy started development on an implementation of the NumPy API for PyPy. As of 2023, it is not yet fully compatible with NumPy. Features NumPy targets the CPython reference implementation of Python, which is a non-optimizing bytecode interpreter. Mathematical algorithms written for this version of Python often run much slower than compiled equivalents due to the absence of compiler optimization. NumPy addresses the slowness problem partly by providing multidimensional arrays and functions and operators that operate efficiently on arrays; using these requires rewriting some code, mostly inner loops, using NumPy. Using NumPy in Python gives functionality comparable to MATLAB since they are both interpreted, and they both allow the user to write fast programs as long as most operations work on arrays or matrices instead of scalars. In comparison, MATLAB boasts a large number of additional toolboxes, notably Simulink, whereas NumPy is intrinsically integrated with Python, a more modern and complete programming language. Moreover, complementary Python packages are available; SciPy is a library that adds more MATLAB-like functionality and Matplotlib is a plotting package that provides MATLAB-like plotting functionality. Although MATLAB can perform sparse matrix operations, NumPy alone cannot perform such operations and requires the use of the scipy.sparse library. Internally, both MATLAB and NumPy rely on BLAS and LAPACK for efficient linear algebra computations. Python bindings of the widely used computer vision library OpenCV utilize NumPy arrays to store and operate on data. Since images with multiple channels are simply represented as three-dimensional arrays, indexing, slicing or masking with other arrays are very efficient ways to access specific pixels of an image. The NumPy array as universal data structure in OpenCV for images, extracted feature points, filter kernels and many more vastly simplifies the programming workflow and debugging.[citation needed] Importantly, many NumPy operations release the global interpreter lock, which allows for multithreaded processing. NumPy also provides a C API, which allows Python code to interoperate with external libraries written in low-level languages. The core functionality of NumPy is its "ndarray", for n-dimensional array, data structure. These arrays are strided views on memory. In contrast to Python's built-in list data structure, these arrays are homogeneously typed: all elements of a single array must be of the same type. Such arrays can also be views into memory buffers allocated by C/C++, Python, and Fortran extensions to the CPython interpreter without the need to copy data around, giving a degree of compatibility with existing numerical libraries. This functionality is exploited by the SciPy package, which wraps a number of such libraries (notably BLAS and LAPACK). NumPy has built-in support for memory-mapped ndarrays. Inserting or appending entries to an array is not as trivially possible as it is with Python's lists. The np.pad(...) routine to extend arrays actually creates new arrays of the desired shape and padding values, copies the given array into the new one and returns it. NumPy's np.concatenate([a1,a2]) operation does not actually link the two arrays but returns a new one, filled with the entries from both given arrays in sequence. Reshaping the dimensionality of an array with np.reshape(...) is only possible as long as the number of elements in the array does not change. These circumstances originate from the fact that NumPy's arrays must be views on contiguous memory buffers. Algorithms that are not expressible as a vectorized operation will typically run slowly because they must be implemented in "pure Python", while vectorization may increase memory complexity of some operations from constant to linear, because temporary arrays must be created that are as large as the inputs. Runtime compilation of numerical code has been implemented by several groups to avoid these problems; open source solutions that interoperate with NumPy include numexpr and Numba. Cython and Pythran are static-compiling alternatives to these. Many modern large-scale scientific computing applications have requirements that exceed the capabilities of the NumPy arrays. For example, NumPy arrays are usually loaded into a computer's memory, which might have insufficient capacity for the analysis of large datasets. Further, NumPy operations are executed on a single CPU. However, many linear algebra operations can be accelerated by executing them on clusters of CPUs or of specialized hardware, such as GPUs and TPUs, which many deep learning applications rely on. As a result, several alternative array implementations have arisen in the scientific python ecosystem over the recent years, such as Dask for distributed arrays and TensorFlow or JAX for computations on GPUs. Because of its popularity, these often implement a subset of NumPy's API or mimic it, so that users can change their array implementation with minimal changes to their code required. A library named CuPy, accelerated by Nvidia's CUDA framework, has also shown potential for faster computing, being a 'drop-in replacement' of NumPy. Examples NumPy is conventionally imported as np. Functional Python and vectorized NumPy version. Quickly wrap native code for faster scripts. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents The New York Times The New York Times (NYT)[b] is a newspaper based in Manhattan, New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the Times serves as one of the country's newspapers of record. As of August 2025[update], The New York Times had 11.88 million total and 11.3 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 580,000 print subscribers. The New York Times is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publisher is A. G. Sulzberger. The Times is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Midtown Manhattan. The Times was founded as the conservative New-York Daily Times in 1851, and came to national recognition in the 1870s with its aggressive coverage of corrupt politician Boss Tweed. Following the Panic of 1893, Chattanooga Times publisher Adolph Ochs gained a controlling interest in the company. In 1935, Ochs was succeeded by his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who began a push into European news. Sulzberger's son Arthur Ochs Sulzberger became publisher in 1963, adapting to a changing newspaper industry and introducing radical changes. The New York Times was involved in the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which restricted the ability of public officials to sue the media for defamation. In 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, an internal Department of Defense document detailing the United States's historical involvement in the Vietnam War, despite pushback from then-president Richard Nixon. In the landmark decision New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment guaranteed the right to publish the Pentagon Papers. In the 1980s, the Times began a two-decade progression to digital technology and launched nytimes.com in 1996. In the 21st century, it shifted its publication online amid the global decline of newspapers. Currently, the Times maintains several regional bureaus staffed with journalists across six continents. It has expanded to several other publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times International Edition, and The New York Times Book Review. In addition, the paper has produced several television series, podcasts—including The Daily—and games through The New York Times Games. The New York Times has been involved in a number of controversies in its history. Among other accolades, it has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize 135 times since 1918, the most of any publication. According to a 2025 Pew Research Center study on educational differences among audiences of 30 major U.S. news outlets, The New York Times had the highest proportion of college-educated readers among the daily newspapers surveyed, with 56% of its audience holding at least a bachelor's degree. History The New York Times was established in 1851 as the New-York Daily Times by New-York Tribune journalists Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones. The Times experienced significant circulation, particularly among conservatives; New-York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley praised the Times. During the American Civil War, Times correspondents gathered information directly from Confederate states. In 1869, Jones inherited the paper from Raymond, who had changed its name to The New-York Times. Under Jones, the Times began to publish a series of articles criticizing Tammany Hall political boss William M. Tweed, despite vehement opposition from other New York newspapers. In 1871, The New-York Times published Tammany Hall's accounting books; Tweed was tried in 1873 and sentenced to twelve years in prison. The Times earned national recognition for its coverage of Tweed. In 1891, Jones died, creating a management imbroglio in which his children had insufficient business acumen to inherit the company and his will prevented an acquisition of the Times. Editor-in-chief Charles Ransom Miller, editorial editor Edward Cary, and correspondent George F. Spinney established a company to manage The New-York Times, but faced financial difficulties during the Panic of 1893. In August 1896, Chattanooga Times publisher Adolph Ochs acquired The New-York Times, implementing significant alterations to the newspaper's structure. Ochs established the Times as a merchant's newspaper and removed the hyphen from the newspaper's name. In 1905, The New York Times opened Times Tower, marking expansion. The Times experienced a political realignment in the 1910s amid several disagreements within the Republican Party. The New York Times reported on the sinking of the Titanic, as other newspapers were cautious about bulletins circulated by the Associated Press. Through managing editor Carr Van Anda, the Times paid considerable attention to advances in science, reporting on Albert Einstein's then-obscure theory of general relativity and becoming involved in the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. In April 1935, Ochs died, leaving his son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger as publisher. The Great Depression forced Sulzberger to reduce The New York Times's operations, and developments in the New York newspaper landscape resulted in the formation of larger newspapers, such as the New York Herald Tribune and the New York World-Telegram. In contrast to Ochs, Sulzberger encouraged wirephotography. The New York Times extensively covered World War II through large headlines, reporting on exclusive stories such as the Yugoslav coup d'état. Amid the war, Sulzberger began expanding the Times's operations further, acquiring WQXR-FM in 1944—the first non-Times investment since the Jones era—and established a fashion show in Times Hall. Despite reductions as a result of conscription, The New York Times retained the largest journalism staff of any newspaper. The Times's print edition became available internationally during the war through the Army & Air Force Exchange Service; The New York Times Overseas Weekly later became available in Japan through The Asahi Shimbun and in Germany through the Frankfurter Zeitung. The international edition would develop into a separate newspaper. Journalist William L. Laurence publicized the atomic bomb race between the United States and Germany, resulting in the Federal Bureau of Investigation seizing copies of the Times. The United States government recruited Laurence to document the Manhattan Project in April 1945. Laurence became the only witness of the Manhattan Project, a detail realized by employees of The New York Times following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Following World War II, The New York Times continued to expand. The Times was subject to investigations from the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, a McCarthyist subcommittee that investigated purported communism from within press institutions. Arthur Hays Sulzberger's decision to dismiss a copyreader who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment drew ire from within the Times and from external organizations. In April 1961, Sulzberger resigned, appointing his son-in-law, The New York Times Company president Orvil Dryfoos. Under Dryfoos, The New York Times established a newspaper based in Los Angeles. In 1962, the implementation of automated printing presses in response to increasing costs mounted fears over technological unemployment. The New York Typographical Union staged a strike in December, altering the media consumption of New Yorkers. The strike left New York with three remaining newspapers—the Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post—by its conclusion in March 1963. In May, Dryfoos died of a heart ailment. Following weeks of ambiguity, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger became The New York Times's publisher. Technological advancements leveraged by newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and improvements in coverage from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal necessitated adaptations to nascent computing. The New York Times published "Heed Their Rising Voices" in 1960, a full-page advertisement purchased by supporters of Martin Luther King Jr. criticizing law enforcement in Montgomery, Alabama for their response to the civil rights movement. Montgomery Public Safety commissioner L. B. Sullivan sued the Times for defamation. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the verdict in Alabama county court and the Supreme Court of Alabama violated the First Amendment. The decision is considered to be landmark. After financial losses, The New York Times ended its international edition, acquiring a stake in the Paris Herald Tribune, forming the International Herald Tribune. The Times initially published the Pentagon Papers, facing opposition from then-president Richard Nixon. The Supreme Court ruled in The New York Times's favor in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), allowing the Times and The Washington Post to publish the papers. The New York Times remained cautious in its initial coverage of the Watergate scandal. As Congress began investigating the scandal, the Times furthered its coverage, publishing details on the Huston Plan, alleged wiretapping of reporters and officials, and testimony from James W. McCord Jr. that the Committee for the Re-Election of the President paid the conspirators off. The exodus of readers to suburban New York newspapers, such as Newsday and Gannett papers, adversely affected The New York Times's circulation. Contemporary newspapers balked at additional sections; Time devoted a cover for its criticism and New York wrote that the Times was engaging in "middle-class self-absorption". The New York Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post were the subject of a strike in 1978, allowing emerging newspapers to leverage halted coverage. The Times deliberately avoided coverage of the AIDS epidemic, running its first front-page article in May 1983. Max Frankel's editorial coverage of the epidemic, with mentions of anal intercourse, contrasted with then-executive editor A. M. Rosenthal's puritan approach, intentionally avoiding descriptions of the luridity of gay venues. Following years of waning interest in The New York Times, Sulzberger resigned in January 1992, appointing his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., as publisher. The Internet represented a generational shift within the Times; Sulzberger, who negotiated The New York Times Company's acquisition of The Boston Globe in 1993, derided the Internet, while his son expressed antithetical views. @times appeared on America Online's website in May 1994 as an extension of The New York Times, featuring news articles, film reviews, sports news, and business articles. Despite opposition, several employees of the Times had begun to access the Internet. The online success of publications that traditionally co-existed with the Times—such as America Online, Yahoo, and CNN—and the expansion of websites such as Monster.com and Craigslist that threatened The New York Times's classified advertisement model increased efforts to develop a website. nytimes.com debuted on January 19 and was formally announced three days later. The Times published domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski's essay Industrial Society and Its Future in 1995, contributing to his arrest after his brother David recognized the essay's penmanship. Following the establishment of nytimes.com, The New York Times retained its journalistic hesitancy under executive editor Joseph Lelyveld, refusing to publish an article reporting on the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal from Drudge Report. nytimes.com editors conflicted with print editors on several occasions, including wrongfully naming security guard Richard Jewell as the suspect in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing and covering the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in greater detail than the print edition. The New York Times Electronic Media Company was adversely affected by the dot-com crash. The Times extensively covered the September 11 attacks. The following day's print issue contained sixty-six articles, the work of over three hundred dispatched reporters. Journalist Judith Miller was the recipient of a package containing a white powder during the 2001 anthrax attacks, furthering anxiety within The New York Times. In September 2002, Miller and military correspondent Michael R. Gordon wrote an article for the Times claiming that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes. The article was cited by then-president George W. Bush to claim that Iraq was constructing weapons of mass destruction; the theoretical use of aluminum tubes to produce nuclear material was speculation. In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, beginning the Iraq War. The New York Times attracted controversy after thirty-six articles from journalist Jayson Blair were discovered to be plagiarized. Criticism over then-executive editor Howell Raines and then-managing editor Gerald M. Boyd mounted following the scandal, culminating in a town hall in which a deputy editor criticized Raines for failing to question Blair's sources in article he wrote on the D.C. sniper attacks. In June 2003, Raines and Boyd resigned. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. appointed Bill Keller as executive editor. Miller continued to report on the Iraq War as a journalistic embed covering the country's weapons of mass destruction program. Keller and then-Washington bureau chief Jill Abramson unsuccessfully attempted to subside criticism. Conservative media criticized the Times over its coverage of missing explosives from the Al Qa'qaa weapons facility. An article in December 2005 disclosing warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency contributed to further criticism from the George W. Bush administration and the Senate's refusal to renew the Patriot Act. In the Plame affair, a Central Intelligence Agency inquiry found that Miller had become aware of Valerie Plame's identity through then-vice president Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby, resulting in Miller's resignation. During the Great Recession, The New York Times suffered significant fiscal difficulties as a consequence of the subprime mortgage crisis and a decline in classified advertising. Exacerbated by Rupert Murdoch's revitalization of The Wall Street Journal through his acquisition of Dow Jones & Company, The New York Times Company began enacting measures to reduce the newsroom budget. The company was forced to borrow $250 million (equivalent to $373.84 million in 2025) from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and fired over one hundred employees by 2010. nytimes.com's coverage of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, resulting in the resignation of then-New York governor Eliot Spitzer, furthered the legitimacy of the website as a journalistic medium. The Times's economic downturn renewed discussions of an online paywall; The New York Times implemented a paywall in March 2011. Abramson succeeded Keller, continuing her characteristic investigations into corporate and government malfeasance into the Times's coverage. Following conflicts with newly appointed chief executive Mark Thompson's ambitions, Abramson was dismissed by Sulzberger Jr., who named Dean Baquet as her replacement. Leading up to the 2016 presidential election, The New York Times elevated the Hillary Clinton email controversy into a national issue. Donald Trump's upset victory contributed to an increase in subscriptions to the Times. The New York Times experienced unprecedented indignation from Trump, who referred to publications such as the Times as "enemies of the people" at the Conservative Political Action Conference and tweeted his disdain for the newspaper and CNN. In October 2017, The New York Times published an article by journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey alleging that dozens of women had accused film producer and The Weinstein Company co-chairman Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. The investigation resulted in Weinstein's resignation and conviction, precipitated the Weinstein effect, and served as a catalyst for the #MeToo movement. The New York Times Company vacated the public editor position and eliminated the copy desk in November. Sulzberger Jr. announced his resignation in December 2017, appointing his son, A. G. Sulzberger, as publisher. Trump's relationship—equally diplomatic and negative—marked Sulzberger's tenure. In September 2018, The New York Times published "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration", an anonymous essay by a self-described Trump administration official later revealed to be Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor. The animosity—which extended to nearly three hundred instances of Trump disparaging the Times by May 2019—culminated in Trump ordering federal agencies to cancel their subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post in October 2019. Trump's tax returns have been the subject of three separate investigations.[c] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Times began implementing data services and graphs. On May 23, 2020, The New York Times's front page solely featured U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss, a subset of the 100,000 people in the United States who died of COVID-19, the first time that the Times's front page lacked images since they were introduced. Since 2020, The New York Times has focused on broader diversification, developing online games and producing television series. The New York Times Company acquired The Athletic in January 2022. Organization Since 1896, The New York Times has been published by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, having previously been published by Henry Jarvis Raymond until 1869 and by George Jones until 1896. Adolph Ochs published the Times until his death in 1935, when he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Sulzberger was publisher until 1961 and was succeeded by Orvil Dryfoos, his son-in-law, who served in the position until his death in 1963. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger succeeded Dryfoos until his resignation in 1992. His son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., served as publisher until 2018. The New York Times's current publisher is A. G. Sulzberger, Sulzberger Jr.'s son. As of 2023, the Times's executive editor is Joseph Kahn and the paper's managing editors are Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan, having been appointed in June 2022. The New York Times's deputy managing editors are Sam Dolnick, Monica Drake, and Steve Duenes, and the paper's assistant managing editors are Matthew Ericson, Jonathan Galinsky, Hannah Poferl, Sam Sifton, Karron Skog, and Michael Slackman. The New York Times is owned by The New York Times Company, a publicly traded company. The New York Times Company, in addition to the Times, owns Wirecutter, The Athletic, The New York Times Cooking, and The New York Times Games, and acquired Serial Productions and Audm. The New York Times Company holds undisclosed minority investments in multiple other businesses, and formerly owned The Boston Globe and several radio and television stations. The New York Times Company is majority-owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through elevated shares in the company's dual-class stock structure held largely in a trust, in effect since the 1950s; as of 2022, the family holds ninety-five percent of The New York Times Company's Class B shares, allowing it to elect seventy percent of the company's board of directors. Class A shareholders have restrictive voting rights. As of 2023, The New York Times Company's chief executive is Meredith Kopit Levien, the company's former chief operating officer who was appointed in September 2020. As of March 2023, The New York Times Company employs 5,800 individuals, including 1,700 journalists according to deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick. Journalists for The New York Times may not run for public office, provide financial support to political candidates or causes, endorse candidates, or demonstrate public support for causes or movements. Journalists are subject to the guidelines established in "Ethical Journalism" and "Guidelines on Integrity". According to the former, Times journalists must abstain from using sources with a personal relationship to them and must not accept reimbursements or inducements from individuals who may be written about in The New York Times, with exceptions for gifts of nominal value. The latter requires attribution and exact quotations, though exceptions are made for linguistic anomalies. Staff writers are expected to ensure the veracity of all written claims, but may delegate researching obscure facts to the research desk. In March 2021, the Times established a committee to avoid journalistic conflicts of interest with work written for The New York Times, following columnist David Brooks's resignation from the Aspen Institute for his undisclosed work on the initiative Weave. The New York Times editorial board was established in 1896 by Adolph Ochs. With the opinion department, the editorial board is independent of the newsroom. Then-editor-in-chief Charles Ransom Miller served as opinion editor from 1883 until his death in 1922. Rollo Ogden succeeded Miller until his death in 1937. From 1937 to 1938, John Huston Finley served as opinion editor; in a prearranged plan, Charles Merz succeeded Finley. Merz served in the position until his retirement in 1961. John Bertram Oakes served as opinion editor from 1961 to 1976, when then-publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger appointed Max Frankel. Frankel served in the position until 1986, when he was appointed as executive editor. Jack Rosenthal was the opinion editor from 1986 to 1993. Howell Raines succeeded Rosenthal until 2001, when he was made executive editor. Gail Collins succeeded Raines until her resignation in 2006. From 2007 to 2016, Andrew Rosenthal was the opinion editor. James Bennet succeeded Rosenthal until his resignation in 2020. As of July 2024[update], the editorial board comprises thirteen opinion writers. The New York Times's opinion editor is Kathleen Kingsbury and the deputy opinion editor is Patrick Healy. The New York Times's editorial board was initially opposed to liberal beliefs, opposing women's suffrage in 1900 and 1914. The editorial board began to espouse progressive beliefs during Oakes's tenure, conflicting with the Ochs-Sulzberger family, of which Oakes was a member as Adolph Ochs's nephew; in 1976, Oakes publicly disagreed with Sulzberger's endorsement of Daniel Patrick Moynihan over Bella Abzug in the 1976 Senate Democratic primaries in a letter sent from Martha's Vineyard. Under Rosenthal, the editorial board took positions supporting assault weapons legislation and the legalization of marijuana, but publicly criticized the Obama administration over its portrayal of terrorism. In presidential elections, The New York Times has endorsed a total of twelve Republican candidates and thirty-two Democratic candidates, and has endorsed the Democrat in every election since 1960.[j] With the exception of Wendell Willkie, Republicans endorsed by the Times have won the presidency. In 2016, the editorial board issued an anti-endorsement against Donald Trump for the first time in its history. In February 2020, the editorial board reduced its presence from several editorials each day to occasional editorials for events deemed particularly significant. Since August 2024, the board no longer endorses candidates in local or congressional races in New York. Since 1940, editorial, media, and technology workers of The New York Times have been represented by the New York Times Guild. The Times Guild, along with the Times Tech Guild, are represented by the NewsGuild-CWA. In 1940, Arthur Hays Sulzberger was called upon by the National Labor Relations Board amid accusations that he had discouraged Guild membership in the Times. Over the next few years, the Guild would ratify several contracts, expanding to editorial and news staff in 1942 and maintenance workers in 1943. The New York Times Guild has walked out several times in its history, including for six and a half hours in 1981 and in 2017, when copy editors and reporters walked out at lunchtime in response to the elimination of the copy desk. On December 7, 2022, the union held a one-day strike, the first interruption to The New York Times since 1978. The New York Times Guild reached an agreement in May 2023 to increase minimum salaries for employees and a retroactive bonus. The Times Tech Guild is the largest technology union with collective bargaining rights in the United States. The guild held a second strike beginning on November 4, 2024, threatening the Times's coverage of the 2024 United States presidential election. Content As of August 2025, The New York Times has 11.8 million subscribers, with 11.3 million online-only subscribers and 580,000 print subscribers. The New York Times Company intends to have 15 million subscribers by 2027. The Times's shift towards subscription-based revenue with the debut of an online paywall in 2011 contributed to subscription revenue exceeding advertising revenue the following year, furthered by the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump. In 2022, Vox wrote that The New York Times's subscribers skew "older, richer, whiter, and more liberal"; to reflect the general population of the United States, the Times has attempted to alter its audience by acquiring The Athletic, investing in verticals such as The New York Times Games, and beginning a marketing campaign showing diverse subscribers to the Times. The New York Times Company chief executive Meredith Kopit Levien stated that the average age of subscribers has remained constant. In October 2001, The New York Times began publishing DealBook, a financial newsletter edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The Times had intended to publish the newsletter in September, but delayed its debut following the September 11 attacks. A website for DealBook was established in March 2006. The New York Times began shifting towards DealBook as part of the newspaper's financial coverage in November 2010 with a renewed website and a presence in the Times's print edition. In 2011, the Times began hosting the DealBook Summit, an annual conference hosted by Sorkin. During the COVID-19 pandemic, The New York Times hosted the DealBook Online Summit in 2020 and 2021. The 2022 DealBook Summit featured—among other speakers—former vice president Mike Pence and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, culminating in an interview with former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried; FTX had filed for bankruptcy several weeks prior. The 2023 DealBook Summit's speakers included vice president Kamala Harris, Israeli president Isaac Herzog, and businessman Elon Musk. In June 2010, The New York Times licensed the political blog FiveThirtyEight in a three-year agreement. The blog, written by Nate Silver, had garnered attention during the 2008 presidential election for predicting the elections in forty-nine of fifty states. FiveThirtyEight appeared on nytimes.com in August. According to Silver, several offers were made for the blog; Silver wrote that a merger of unequals must allow for editorial sovereignty and resources from the acquirer, comparing himself to Groucho Marx. According to The New Republic, FiveThirtyEight drew as much as a fifth of the traffic to nytimes.com during the 2012 presidential election. In July 2013, FiveThirtyEight was sold to ESPN. In an article following Silver's exit, public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote that he was disruptive to the Times's culture for his perspective on probability-based predictions and scorn for polling—having stated that punditry is "fundamentally useless", comparing him to Billy Beane, who implemented sabermetrics in baseball. According to Sullivan, his work was criticized by several notable political journalists. The New Republic obtained a memo in November 2013 revealing then-Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt's ambitions to establish a data-driven newsletter with presidential historian Michael Beschloss, graphic designer Amanda Cox, economist Justin Wolfers, and The New Republic journalist Nate Cohn. By March, Leonhardt had amassed fifteen employees from within The New York Times; the newsletter's staff included individuals who had created the Times's dialect quiz, fourth down analyzer, and a calculator for determining buying or renting a home. The Upshot debuted in April 2014. Fast Company reviewed an article about Illinois Secure Choice—a state-funded retirement saving system—as "neither a terse news item, nor a formal financial advice column, nor a politically charged response to economic policy", citing its informal and neutral tone. The Upshot developed "the needle" for the 2016 presidential election and 2020 presidential elections, a thermometer dial displaying the probability of a candidate winning. In January 2016, Cox was named editor of The Upshot. Kevin Quealy was named editor in June 2022. The New York Times has said it is perceived as a liberal newspaper. An analysis by Pew Research Center in October 2014 placed the Times readership as ideologically liberal based on a scale of 10 political values questions. According to an internal readership poll conducted by The New York Times in 2019, eighty-four percent of readers identified as liberal. The New York Times has struggled internally with how to balance its coverage, dismissing criticism from the left for "sanewashing" right-wing viewpoints in its coverage of Donald Trump. In covering Israel's war on the Gaza Strip that began in 2023, The New York Times instructed its reporters to restrict use of the terms 'Palestine', 'genocide', and 'refugee camps' to specific usages, with data analysis showing a pattern of articles emphasizing Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians over a much larger number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israelis. The group Writers Against the War on Gaza wrote in the blog Mondoweiss that this has contrasted with The New York Times coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in which Russia is considered a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests, while Israel is considered an ally. In February 1942, The New York Times crossword debuted in The New York Times Magazine; according to Richard Shepard, the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 convinced then-publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the necessity of a crossword. The New York Times has published recipes since the 1850s and has had a separate food section since the 1940s. In 1961, restaurant critic Craig Claiborne published The New York Times Cookbook, an unauthorized cookbook that drew from the Times's recipes. Since 2010, former food editor Amanda Hesser has published The Essential New York Times Cookbook, a compendium of recipes from The New York Times. The Innovation Report in 2014 revealed that the Times had attempted to establish a cooking website since 1998, but faced difficulties with the absence of a defined data structure. In September 2014, The New York Times introduced NYT Cooking, an application and website. Edited by food editor Sam Sifton, the Times's cooking website features 21,000 recipes as of 2022. NYT Cooking features videos as part of an effort by Sifton to hire two former Tasty employees from BuzzFeed. In August 2023, NYT Cooking added personalized recommendations through the cosine similarity of text embeddings of recipe titles. The website also features no-recipe recipes, a concept proposed by Sifton. In May 2016, The New York Times Company announced a partnership with startup Chef'd to form a meal delivery service that would deliver ingredients from The New York Times Cooking recipes to subscribers; Chef'd shut down in July 2018 after failing to accrue capital and secure financing. The Hollywood Reporter reported in September 2022 that the Times would expand its delivery options to US$95 cooking kits curated by chefs such as Nina Compton, Chintan Pandya, and Naoko Takei Moore. That month, the staff of NYT Cooking went on tour with Compton, Pandya, and Moore in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York City, culminating in a food festival. In addition, The New York Times offered its own wine club originally operated by the Global Wine Company. The New York Times Wine Club was established in August 2009, during a dramatic decrease in advertising revenue. By 2021, the wine club was managed by Lot18, a company that provides proprietary labels. Lot18 managed the Williams Sonoma Wine Club and its own wine club Tasting Room. The New York Times archives its articles in a basement annex beneath its building known as "the morgue", a venture started by managing editor Carr Van Anda in 1907. The morgue comprises news clippings, a pictures library, and the Times's book and periodicals library. As of 2014, it is the largest library of any media company, dating back to 1851. In November 2018, The New York Times partnered with Google to digitize the Archival Library. Additionally, The New York Times has maintained a virtual microfilm reader known as TimesMachine since 2014. The service launched with archives from 1851 to 1980; in 2016, TimesMachine expanded to include archives from 1981 to 2002. The Times built a pipeline to take in TIFF images, article metadata in XML and an INI file of Cartesian geometry describing the boundaries of the page, and convert it into a PNG of image tiles and JSON containing the information in the XML and INI files. The image tiles are generated using GDAL and displayed using Leaflet, using data from a content delivery network. The Times ran optical character recognition on the articles using Tesseract and shingled and fuzzy string matched the result. The New York Times uses a proprietary content management system known as Scoop for its online content and the Microsoft Word-based content management system CCI for its print content. Scoop was developed in 2008 to serve as a secondary content management system for editors working in CCI to publish their content on the Times's website; as part of The New York Times's online endeavors, editors now write their content in Scoop and send their work to CCI for print publication. Since its introduction, Scoop has superseded several processes within the Times, including print edition planning and collaboration, and features tools such as multimedia integration, notifications, content tagging, and drafts. The New York Times uses private articles for high-profile opinion pieces, such as those written by Russian president Vladimir Putin and actress Angelina Jolie, and for high-level investigations. In January 2012, the Times released Integrated Content Editor (ICE), a revision tracking tool for WordPress and TinyMCE. ICE is integrated within the Times's workflow by providing a unified text editor for print and online editors, reducing the divide between print and online operations. By 2017, The New York Times began developing a new authoring tool to its content management system known as Oak, in an attempt to further the Times's visual efforts in articles and reduce the discrepancy between the mediums in print and online articles. The system reduces the input of editors and supports additional visual mediums in an editor that resembles the appearance of the article. Oak is based on ProseMirror, a JavaScript rich-text editor toolkit, and retains the revision tracking and commenting functionalities of The New York Times's previous systems. Additionally, Oak supports predefined article headers. In 2019, Oak was updated to support collaborative editing using Firebase to update editors's cursor status. Several Google Cloud Functions and Google Cloud Tasks allow articles to be previewed as they will be printed, and the Times's primary MySQL database is regularly updated to update editors on the article status. Style and design Since 1895, The New York Times has maintained a manual of style in several forms. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage was published on the Times's intranet in 1999. The New York Times uses honorifics when referring to individuals. With the AP Stylebook's removal of honorifics in 2000 and The Wall Street Journal's omission of courtesy titles in May 2023, the Times is the only national newspaper that continues to use honorifics. According to former copy editor Merrill Perlman, The New York Times continues to use honorifics as a "sign of civility". The Times's use of courtesy titles led to an apocryphal rumor that the paper had referred to singer Meat Loaf as "Mr. Loaf". Several exceptions have been made; the former sports section and The New York Times Book Review do not use honorifics. A leaked memo following the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 revealed that editors were given a last-minute instruction to omit the honorific from Osama bin Laden's name, consistent with deceased figures of historic significance, such as Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, and Vladimir Lenin. The New York Times uses academic and military titles for individuals prominently serving in that position. In 1986, the Times began to use Ms., and introduced the gender-neutral title Mx. in 2015. The New York Times uses initials when a subject has expressed a preference, such as Donald Trump. The New York Times maintains a strict but not absolute obscenity policy, including phrases. In a review of the Canadian hardcore punk band Fucked Up, music critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote that the band's name—entirely rendered in asterisks—would not be printed in the Times "unless an American president, or someone similar, says it by mistake"; The New York Times did not repeat then-vice president Dick Cheney's use of "fuck" against then-senator Patrick Leahy in 2004 or then-vice president Joe Biden's remarks that the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was a "big fucking deal". The Times's profanity policy has been tested by former president Donald Trump. The New York Times published Trump's Access Hollywood tape in October 2016, containing the words "fuck", "pussy", "bitch", and "tits", the first time the publication had published an expletive on its front page, and repeated an explicit phrase for fellatio stated by then-White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci in July 2017. The New York Times omitted Trump's use of the phrase "shithole countries" from its headline in favor of "vulgar language" in January 2018. The Times banned certain words, such as "bitch", "whore", and "sluts", from Wordle in 2022. Journalists for The New York Times do not write their own headlines, but rather copy editors who specifically write headlines. The Times's guidelines insist headline editors get to the main point of an article but avoid giving away endings, if present. Other guidelines include using slang "sparingly", avoiding tabloid headlines, not ending a line on a preposition, article, or adjective, and chiefly, not to pun. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage states that wordplay, such as "Rubber Industry Bounces Back", is to be tested on a colleague as a canary is to be tested in a coal mine; "when no song bursts forth, start rewriting". The New York Times has amended headlines due to controversy. In 2019, following two back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, the Times used the headline, "Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism", to describe then-president Donald Trump's words after the shootings. After criticism from FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, the headline was changed to, "Assailing Hate But Not Guns". Online, The New York Times's headlines do not face the same length restrictions as headlines that appear in print; print headlines must fit within a column, often six words. Additionally, headlines must "break" properly, containing a complete thought on each line without splitting up prepositions and adverbs. Writers may edit a headline to fit an article more aptly if further developments occur. The Times uses A/B testing for articles on the front page, placing two headlines against each other. At the end of the test, the headlines that receives more traffic is chosen. The alteration of a headline regarding intercepted Russian data used in the Mueller special counsel investigation was noted by Trump in a March 2017 interview with Time, in which he claimed that the headline used the word "wiretapped" in the print version of the paper on January 20, while the digital article on January 19 omitted the word. The headline was intentionally changed in the print version to use "wiretapped" in order to fit within the print guidelines. The nameplate of The New York Times has been unaltered since 1967. In creating the initial nameplate, Henry Jarvis Raymond took as his model the British newspaper The Times, which used a Blackletter style called Textura, popularized following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and regional variations of Alcuin's script, as well as a period. With the change to The New-York Times on September 14, 1857, the nameplate followed. Under George Jones, the terminals of the "N", "r", and "s" were intentionally exaggerated into swashes. The nameplate in the January 15, 1894, issue trimmed the terminals once more, smoothed the edges, and turned the stem supporting the "T" into an ornament. The hyphen was dropped on December 1, 1896, after Adolph Ochs purchased the paper. The descender of the "h" was shortened on December 30, 1914. The largest change to the nameplate was introduced on February 21, 1967, when type designer Ed Benguiat redesigned the logo, most prominently turning the arrow ornament into a diamond. Notoriously, the new logo dropped the period that had followed the word Times up until that point; one reader compared the omission of the period to "performing plastic surgery on Helen of Troy." Picture editor John Radosta worked with a New York University professor to determine that dropping the period saved the paper US$41.28 (equivalent to $398.59 in 2025). Print edition As of December 2023, The New York Times has printed sixty thousand issues, a statistic represented in the paper's masthead to the right of the volume number, the Times's years in publication written in Roman numerals. The volume and issues are separated by four dots representing the edition number of that issue; on the day of the 2000 presidential election, the Times was revised four separate times, necessitating the use of an em dash in place of an ellipsis. The em dash issue was printed hundreds times over before being replaced by the one-dot issue. Despite efforts by newsroom employees to recycle copies sent to The New York Times's office, several copies were kept, including one put on display at the Museum at The Times. From February 7, 1898, to December 31, 1999, the Times's issue number was incorrect by five hundred issues, an error suspected by The Atlantic to be the result of a careless front page type editor. The misreporting was noticed by news editor Aaron Donovan, who was calculating the number of issues in a spreadsheet and noticed the discrepancy. The New York Times celebrated fifty thousand issues on March 14, 1995, an observance that should have occurred on July 26, 1996. The New York Times has reduced the physical size of its print edition while retaining its broadsheet format. The New-York Daily Times debuted at 18 inches (460 mm) across. By the 1950s, the Times was being printed at 16 inches (410 mm) across. In 1953, an increase in paper costs to US$10 (equivalent to $120.34 in 2025) a ton increased newsprint costs to US$21.7 million (equivalent to $326,110,074.63 in 2025) On December 28, 1953, the pages were reduced to 15.5 inches (390 mm). On February 14, 1955, a further reduction to 15 inches (380 mm) occurred, followed by 14.5 and 13.5 inches (370 and 340 mm). On August 6, 2007, the largest cut occurred when the pages were reduced to 12 inches (300 mm),[k] a decision that other broadsheets had previously considered. Then-executive editor Bill Keller stated that a narrower paper would be more beneficial to the reader but acknowledged a net loss in article space of five percent. In 1985, The New York Times Company established a minority stake in a US$21.7 million (equivalent to $326,110,074.63 in 2025) newsprint plant in Clermont, Quebec through Donahue Malbaie. The company sold its equity interest in Donahue Malbaie in 2017. The New York Times often uses large, bolded headlines for major events. For the print version of the Times, these headlines are written by one copy editor, reviewed by two other copy editors, approved by the masthead editors, and polished by other print editors. The process is completed before 8 p.m., but it may be repeated if further development occur, as did take place during the 2020 presidential election. On the day Joe Biden was declared the winner, The New York Times utilized a "hammer headline" reading, "Biden Beats Trump", in all caps and bolded. A dozen journalists discussed several potential headlines, such as "It's Biden" or "Biden's Moment", and prepared for a Donald Trump victory, in which they would use "Trump Prevails". During Trump's first impeachment, the Times drafted the hammer headline, "Trump Impeached". The New York Times altered the ligatures between the E and the A, as not doing so would leave a noticeable gap due to the stem of the A sloping away from the E. The Times reused the tight kerning for "Biden Beats Trump" and Trump's second impeachment, which simply read, "Impeached". In cases where two major events occur on the same day or immediately after each other, The New York Times has used a "paddle wheel" headline, where both headlines are used but split by a line. The term dates back to August 8, 1959, when it was revealed that the United States was monitoring Soviet missile firings and when Explorer 6—shaped like a paddle wheel—launched. Since then, the paddle wheel has been used several times, including on January 21, 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in minutes before Iran released fifty-two American hostages, ending the Iran hostage crisis. At the time, most newspapers favored the end of the hostage crisis, but the Times placed the inauguration above the crisis. Other occasions in which the paddle wheel has been used include on July 26, 2000, when the 2000 Camp David Summit ended without an agreement and when Bush announced that Dick Cheney would be his running mate, and on June 24, 2016, when the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum passed, beginning Brexit, and when the Supreme Court deadlocked in United States v. Texas. The New York Times has run editorials from its editorial board on the front page twice. On June 13, 1920, the Times ran an editorial opposing Warren G. Harding, who was nominated during that year's Republican Party presidential primaries. Amid growing acceptance to run editorials on the front pages from publications such as the Detroit Free Press, The Patriot-News, The Arizona Republic, and The Indianapolis Star, The New York Times ran an editorial on its front page on December 5, 2015, following a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, in which fourteen people were killed. The editorial advocates for the prohibition of "slightly modified combat rifles" used in the San Bernardino shooting and "certain kinds of ammunition". Conservative figures, including Texas senator Ted Cruz, The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Fox & Friends co-anchor Steve Doocy, and then-New Jersey governor Chris Christie criticized the Times. Talk radio host Erick Erickson acquired an issue of The New York Times to fire several rounds into the paper, posting a picture online. Since 1997, The New York Times's primary distribution center is located in College Point, Queens. The facility is 300,000 ft2 (28,000 m2) and employs 170 people as of 2017. The College Point distribution center prints 300,000 to 800,000 newspapers daily. On most occasions, presses start before 11 p.m. and finish before 3 a.m. A robotic crane grabs a roll of newsprint and several rollers ensure ink can be printed on paper. The final newspapers are wrapped in plastic and shipped out. As of 2018, the College Point facility accounted for 41 percent of production. Other copies are printed at 26 other publications, such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Dallas Morning News, The Santa Fe New Mexican, and the Courier Journal. With the decline of newspapers, particularly regional publications, the Times must travel further; for example, newspapers for Hawaii are flown from San Francisco on United Airlines, and Sunday papers are flown from Los Angeles on Hawaiian Airlines. Computer glitches, mechanical issues, and weather phenomena affect circulation but do not stop the paper from reaching customers. The College Point facility prints over two dozen other papers, including The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The New York Times has halted its printing process several times to account for major developments. The first printing stoppage occurred on March 31, 1968, when then-president Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek a second term. Other press stoppages include May 19, 1994, for the death of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and July 17, 1996, for Trans World Airlines Flight 800. The 2000 presidential election necessitated two press stoppages. Al Gore appeared to concede on November 8, forcing then-executive editor Joseph Lelyveld to stop the Times's presses to print a new headline, "Bush Appears to Defeat Gore", with a story that stated George W. Bush was elected president. However, Gore held off his concession speech over doubts over Florida. Lelyveld reran the headline, "Bush and Gore Vie for an Edge". Since 2000, three printing stoppages have been issued for the death of William Rehnquist on September 3, 2005, for the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, and for the passage of the Marriage Equality Act in the New York State Assembly and subsequent signage by then-governor Andrew Cuomo on June 24, 2011. Online platforms The New York Times website is hosted at nytimes.com. It has undergone several major redesigns and infrastructure developments since its debut. In April 2006, The New York Times redesigned its website with an emphasis on multimedia. In preparation for Super Tuesday in February 2008, the Times developed a live election system using the Associated Press's File Transfer Protocol (FTP) service and a Ruby on Rails application; nytimes.com experienced its largest traffic on Super Tuesday and the day after. The NYTimes application debuted with the introduction of the App Store on July 10, 2008. Engadget's Scott McNulty wrote critically of the app, negatively comparing it to The New York Times's mobile website. An iPad version with select articles was released on April 3, 2010, with the release of the first-generation iPad. In October, The New York Times expanded NYT Editors' Choice to include the paper's full articles. NYT for iPad was free until 2011. The Times applications on iPhone and iPad began offering in-app subscriptions in July 2011. The Times released a web application for iPad—featuring a format summarizing trending headlines on Twitter—and a Windows 8 application in October 2012. Efforts to ensure profitability through an online magazine and a "Need to Know" subscription emerged in Adweek in July 2013. In March 2014, The New York Times announced three applications—NYT Now, an application that offers pertinent news in a blog format, and two unnamed applications, later known as NYT Opinion and NYT Cooking—to diversify its product laterals. The Daily is the modern front page of The New York Times. The New York Times manages several podcasts, including multiple podcasts with Serial Productions. The Times's longest-running podcast is The Book Review Podcast, debuting as Inside The New York Times Book Review in April 2006. The New York Times's defining podcast is The Daily, a daily news podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro which debuted on February 1, 2017. Between March 2022 and March 2025, the approximately 30 minute programme was co-hosted with Sabrina Tavernise. Beginning in April 2025 Barbaro was joined by two new regular co-hosts, Natalie Kitroeff and Rachel Abrams. The Interview was launched in 2024 and is hosted weekly by David Marchese and Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Episodes typically last 40 to 50 minutes. Condensed versions of the interviews are published simultaneously in The New York Times Magazine. Guests have included politicians, actors, influential experts, media figures and high-profile writers. In October 2021, The New York Times began testing "New York Times Audio", an application featuring podcasts from the Times, audio versions of articles—including from other publications through Audm, and archives from This American Life. The application debuted in May 2023 exclusively on iOS for Times subscribers. New York Times Audio includes exclusive podcasts such as The Headlines, a daily news recap, and Shorts, short audio stories under ten minutes. In addition, a "Reporter Reads" section features Times journalists reading their articles and providing commentary. The New York Times has used video games as part of its journalistic efforts, among the first publications to do so, contributing to an increase in Internet traffic; the publication has also developed its own video games. In 2014, The New York Times Magazine introduced Spelling Bee, a word game in which players guess words from a set of letters in a honeycomb and are awarded points for the length of the word and receive extra points if the word is a pangram. The game was proposed by Will Shortz, created by Frank Longo, and has been maintained by Sam Ezersky. In May 2018, Spelling Bee was published on nytimes.com, furthering its popularity. In February 2019, the Times introduced Letter Boxed, in which players form words from letters placed on the edges of a square box, followed in June 2019 by Tiles, a matching game in which players form sequences of tile pairings, and Vertex, in which players connect vertices to assemble an image. In July 2023, The New York Times introduced Connections, in which players identify groups of words that are connected by a common property. In April, the Times introduced Digits, a game that required using operations on different values to reach a set number; Digits was shut down in August. In March 2024, The New York Times released Strands, a themed word search. In January 2022, The New York Times Company acquired Wordle, a word game developed by Josh Wardle in 2021, at a valuation in the "low-seven figures". The acquisition was proposed by David Perpich, a member of the Sulzberger family who proposed the purchase to Knight over Slack after reading about the game. The Washington Post purportedly considered acquiring Wordle, according to Vanity Fair. At the 2022 Game Developers Conference, Wardle stated that he was overwhelmed by the volume of Wordle facsimiles and overzealous monetization practices in other games. Concerns over The New York Times monetizing Wordle by implementing a paywall mounted; Wordle is a client-side browser game and can be played offline by downloading its webpage. Wordle moved to the Times's servers and website in February. The game was added to the NYT Games application in August, necessitating it be rewritten in the JavaScript library React. In November, The New York Times announced that Tracy Bennett would be the Wordle's editor. Other publications The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe Magazine are the only weekly Sunday magazines following The Washington Post Magazine's cancellation in December 2022. In February 2016, The New York Times introduced a Spanish website, The New York Times en Español. The website, intended to be read on mobile devices, would contain translated articles from the Times and reporting from journalists based in Mexico City. The Times en Español's style editor is Paulina Chavira, who has advocated for pluralistic Spanish to accommodate the variety of nationalities in the newsroom's journalists and wrote a stylebook for The New York Times en Español. Articles the Times intends to publish in Spanish are sent to a translation agency and adapted for Spanish writing conventions; the present progressive tense may be used for forthcoming events in English, but other tenses are preferable in Spanish. The Times en Español consults the Real Academia Española and Fundéu and frequently modifies the use of diacritics—such as using an acute accent for the Cártel de Sinaloa but not the Cartel de Medellín—and using the gender-neutral pronoun elle. Headlines in The New York Times en Español are not capitalized. The Times en Español publishes El Times, a newsletter led by Elda Cantú intended for all Spanish speakers. In September 2019, The New York Times ended The New York Times en Español's separate operations. A study published in The Translator in 2023 found that the Times en Español engaged in tabloidization. In June 2012, The New York Times introduced a Chinese website, 纽约时报中文, in response to Chinese editions created by The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Conscious to censorship, the Times established servers outside of China and affirmed that the website would uphold the paper's journalistic standards; the government of China had previously blocked articles from nytimes.com through the Great Firewall, and the website was blocked in China until August 2001 after then-general secretary Jiang Zemin met with journalists from The New York Times. Then-foreign editor Joseph Kahn assisted in the establishment of cn.nytimes.com, an effort that contributed to his appointment as executive editor in April 2022. In October 2012, 纽约时报中文 published an article detailing the wealth of then-premier Wen Jiabao's family. In response, the government of China blocked access to nytimes.com and cn.nytimes.com and references to the Times and Wen were censored on microblogging service Sina Weibo. In March 2015, a mirror of 纽约时报中文 and the website for GreatFire were the targets for a government-sanctioned distributed denial of service attack on GitHub in March 2015, disabling access to the service for several days. Chinese authorities requested the removal of The New York Times's news applications from the App Store in December 2016. Awards and recognition As of 2023, The New York Times has received 137 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any publication. The New York Times is considered a newspaper of record in the United States.[l] The Times is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States; as of 2022, The New York Times is the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States behind The Wall Street Journal. A study published in Science, Technology, & Human Values in 2013 found that The New York Times received more citations in academic journals than the American Sociological Review, Research Policy, or the Harvard Law Review. With sixteen million unique records, the Times is the third-most referenced source in Common Crawl, a collection of online material used in datasets such as GPT-3, behind Wikipedia and a United States patent database. The New Yorker's Max Norman wrote in March 2023 that the Times has shaped mainstream English usage. In a January 2018 article for The Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan stated that The New York Times affects the "whole media and political ecosystem". The New York Times's nascent success has led to concerns over media consolidation, particularly amid the decline of newspapers. In 2006, economists Lisa George and Joel Waldfogel examined the consequences of the Times's national distribution strategy and audience with circulation of local newspapers, finding that local circulation decreased among college-educated readers. The effect of The New York Times in this manner was observed in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, the newspaper of record for Fargo, North Dakota. Axios founder Jim VandeHei opined that the Times is "going to basically be a monopoly" in an opinion piece written by then-media columnist and former BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith; in the article, Smith cites the strength of The New York Times's journalistic workforce, broadening content, and the expropriation of Gawker editor-in-chief Choire Sicha, Recode editor-in-chief Kara Swisher, and Quartz editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney. Smith compared the Times to the New York Yankees during their 1927 season containing Murderers' Row. Controversies Since 2003, studies analyzing coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the New York Times have demonstrated a bias against Palestinians and in favor of Israel.[m] The New York Times has received criticism for its coverage of the Gaza war and genocide. In April 2024, The Intercept reported that a November 2023 internal memorandum by Susan Wessling and Philip Pan instructed journalists to reduce using the terms "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and to avoid using the phrase "occupied territory" in the context of Palestinian land, "Palestine" except in rare circumstances, and the term "refugee camps" to describe areas of Gaza despite recognition from the United Nations. A spokesperson from the Times stated that issuing guidance was standard practice. An analysis by The Intercept noted that The New York Times described Israeli deaths as a massacre nearly sixty times, but had only described Palestinian deaths as a massacre once. Writers and editors have left the newspaper due to its coverage of events in Gaza, including Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles. In December 2023, The New York Times published an investigation titled "'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7", alleging that Hamas weaponized sexual and gender-based violence during its armed incursion on Israel. The investigation was the subject of an article from The Intercept questioning the journalistic acumen of Anat Schwartz, a filmmaker involved in the inquiry who had no prior reporting experience and agreed with a post stating Israel should "violate any norm, on the way to victory", doubting the veracity of the opening claim that Gal Abdush was raped in a timespan disputed by her family, and alleging that the Times was pressured by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. The New York Times initiated an inquiry into the leaking of confidential information about the report to other outlets, which received criticism from NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava for purported racial targeting; the Times's investigation was inconclusive, but found gaps in the way proprietary journalistic material is handled. The New York Times Building has been a site of protest action during the Gaza war and genocide, including a November 2023 sit-in demanding that The Times's editorial board publicly call for a ceasefire and accusing the media company of "complicity in laundering genocide", a February 29, 2024, protest and press conference following the release of The Intercept's critical investigation into the NYT "Screams Without Words" exposé, and an action on July 30, 2025, in which protesters spray-painted "NYT Lies, Gaza dies" on the building's glass facade. In addition, protesters blocked The New York Times's distribution center March 14, 2024 and executive editor Joseph Kahn's residence was splattered with red paint on August 25, 2025. The collective Writers Against the War on Gaza, which publishes the mock publication The New York War Crimes, has been associated with protests against The New York Times. On October 27, 2025, 300 writers—including scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals—pledged to boycott The New York Times and withhold contributions to the paper in protest of what they describe as its complicity in the Gaza genocide, demanding 1) a review of anti-Palestinian bias in the newsroom, 2) a retraction of "Screams Without Words", and 3) a call from the editorial board for a US arms embargo on Israel. Among the initial signatories, about 150 had previously contributed to the Times. The New York Times has received criticism regarding its coverage of transgender people. When it published an opinion piece by Weill Cornell Medicine professor Richard A. Friedman called "How Changeable Is Gender?" in August 2015, Vox's German Lopez criticized Friedman as suggesting that parents and doctors might be right in letting children suffer from severe dysphoria in case something changes down the line, and as implying that conversion therapy may work for transgender children. In February 2023, nearly one thousand current and former Times writers and contributors wrote an open letter addressed to standards editor Philip B. Corbett, criticizing the paper's coverage of transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people; some of the Times's articles have been cited in state legislatures attempting to justify criminalizing gender-affirming care. Contributors wrote in the open letter that "the Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources."[n] According to former Times journalist Billie Jean Sweeney, a push for writers to challenge “every aspect of being trans”, ranging from gender-inclusive language to access to medical care, came from the top in 2022 after leadership was handed over to A. G. Sulzberger, Joe Kahn, and Carolyn Ryan; as part of an effort to win good will with the Trump campaign without incurring backlash from the general populace. The Times has continually denied any bias in its reporting, insisting that its coverage of “fiercely contested medical and legal debates” is fair and balanced, and that it would not tolerate journalists protesting its transgender coverage. Notes References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald] | [TOKENS: 2404] |
Contents Emerald Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be3Al2(SiO3)6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium or sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the Mohs scale. Most emeralds have many inclusions, so their toughness (resistance to breakage) is classified as generally poor. Emerald is a cyclosilicate. It occurs mainly in association with quartz, muscovite, albite, schorl, microcline, fluorite, smoky quartz and elbaite. Etymology The word "emerald" is derived (via Old French: esmeraude and Middle English: emeraude), from Vulgar Latin: esmaralda/esmaraldus, a variant of Latin smaragdus, which was via Ancient Greek: σμάραγδος (smáragdos; "green gem"). The Greek word may have a Semitic, Sanskrit or Persian origin. According to Webster's Dictionary the term emerald was first used in the 14th century. Properties determining value Emeralds, like all colored gemstones, are graded using four basic parameters known as "the four Cs": color, clarity, cut and carat weight. Normally, in grading colored gemstones, color is by far the most important criterion. A fine emerald must possess not only a pure verdant green hue as described below, but also a high degree of transparency to be considered a top gemstone. This member of the beryl family ranks among the traditional "big four" precious gems along with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Chromium, vanadium, and iron are the trace elements that cause emerald’s color. The presence or absence of each and their relative amounts determine the exact color of an emerald crystal. In gemology, color is divided into three components: hue, saturation, and tone. Emeralds occur in hues ranging from yellow-green to blue-green, with the primary hue necessarily being Dark green. Yellow and blue are the normal secondary hues found in emeralds. Only gems that are medium to dark in tone are considered emeralds; light-toned gems are known instead by the species name green beryl. The finest emeralds are approximately 75% tone on a scale where 0% tone is colorless and 100% is opaque black. In addition, a fine emerald will be well-saturated and have a hue that is bright (vivid). Gray is the normal saturation modifier or mask found in emeralds; a grayish-green hue is a dull-green hue. Emeralds tend to have numerous inclusions and surface-breaking fissures. Unlike diamonds, where the loupe standard (i.e., 10× magnification) is used to grade clarity, emeralds are graded by eye. Thus, if an emerald has no visible inclusions to the eye (assuming normal visual acuity) it is considered flawless. Stones that lack surface breaking fissures are extremely rare and therefore almost all emeralds are treated ("oiled", see below) to enhance the apparent clarity. The inclusions and fissures within an emerald are sometimes described as jardin (French for garden), because of their mossy appearance. Imperfections are unique for each emerald and can be used to identify a particular stone. Eye-clean stones of a vivid primary green hue (as described above), with no more than 15% of any secondary hue or combination (either blue or yellow) of a medium-dark tone, command the highest prices. The relative non-uniformity motivates the cutting of emeralds in cabochon form, rather than faceted shapes. Faceted emeralds are most commonly given an oval cut, or the signature emerald cut, a rectangular cut with facets around the top edge. Most emeralds are oiled as part of the post-lapidary process, in order to fill in surface-reaching cracks so that clarity and stability are improved. Cedar oil, having a similar refractive index, is often used in this widely adopted practice. Other liquids, including synthetic oils and polymers with refractive indexes close to that of emeralds, such as Opticon, are also used. The least expensive emeralds are often treated with epoxy resins, which are effective for filling stones with many fractures. These treatments are typically applied in a vacuum chamber under mild heat, to open the pores of the stone and allow the fracture-filling agent to be absorbed more effectively. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission requires the disclosure of this treatment when an oil-treated emerald is sold. The use of oil is traditional and largely accepted by the gem trade, although oil-treated emeralds are worth much less than untreated emeralds of similar quality. Untreated emeralds must also be accompanied by a certificate from a licensed, independent gemology laboratory. Other treatments, for example the use of green-tinted oil, are not acceptable in the trade. Gems are graded on a four-step scale; none, minor, moderate and highly enhanced. These categories reflect levels of enhancement, not clarity. A gem graded none on the enhancement scale may still exhibit visible inclusions. Laboratories apply these criteria differently. Some gemologists consider the mere presence of oil or polymers to constitute enhancement. Others may ignore traces of oil if the presence of the material does not improve the look of the gemstone. Emerald mines Emeralds in antiquity were mined in Ancient Egypt at locations on Mount Smaragdus since 1500 BC, and India and Austria since at least the 14th century AD. The Egyptian mines were exploited on an industrial scale by the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and later by Islamic conquerors. Mining in Egypt ceased with the discovery of the Colombian deposits. Today, only ruins remain in Egypt. Colombia is historically the world's largest producer of emeralds, with the quantity varying depending on the year, source, and grade. Emerald production in Colombia has increased drastically in the last decade, increasing by 78% from 2000 to 2010. The three main emerald mining areas in Colombia are Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor. Rare "trapiche" emeralds are found in Colombia, distinguished by ray-like spokes of dark impurities. Zambia is the world's second biggest producer, with its Kafubu River area deposits (Kagem Mines) about 45 km (28 mi) southwest of Kitwe responsible for 20% of the world's production of gem-quality stones in 2004. In the first half of 2011, the Kagem Mines produced 3.74 tons of emeralds. Emeralds are found all over the world in countries such as Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In the US, emeralds have been found in Connecticut, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In 1998, emeralds were discovered in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Since the onset of concerns regarding diamond origins, research has been conducted to determine if the mining location could be determined for an emerald already in circulation. Traditional research used qualitative guidelines such as an emerald's color, style and quality of cutting, type of fracture filling, and the anthropological origins of the artifacts bearing the mineral to determine the emerald's mine location. More recent studies using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy methods have uncovered trace chemical element differences between emeralds, including ones mined in close proximity to one another. American gemologist David Cronin and his colleagues have extensively examined the chemical signatures of emeralds resulting from fluid dynamics and subtle precipitation mechanisms, and their research demonstrated the chemical homogeneity of emeralds from the same mining location and the statistical differences that exist between emeralds from different mining locations, including those between the three locations: Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor, in Colombia, South America. Synthetic emerald Both hydrothermal and flux-growth synthetics have been produced, and a method has been developed for producing an emerald overgrowth on colorless beryl. The first commercially successful emerald synthesis process was that of Carroll Chatham, likely involving a lithium vanadate flux process, as Chatham's emeralds do not have any water and contain traces of vanadate, molybdenum and vanadium. The other large producer of flux emeralds was Pierre Gilson Sr., whose products have been on the market since 1964. Gilson's emeralds are usually grown on natural colorless beryl seeds, which are coated on both sides. Growth occurs at the rate of 1 mm per month, a typical seven-month growth run produces emerald crystals 7 mm thick. Hydrothermal synthetic emeralds have been attributed to IG Farben, Nacken, Tairus, and others, but the first satisfactory commercial product was that of Johann Lechleitner of Innsbruck, Austria, which appeared on the market in the 1960s. These stones were initially sold under the names "Emerita" and "Esmeralda", and they were grown as a thin layer of emerald on top of natural colorless beryl stones. Later, from 1965 to 1970, the Linde Division of Union Carbide produced completely synthetic emeralds by hydrothermal synthesis. According to their patents (attributable to E.M. Flanigen), acidic conditions are essential to prevent the chromium (which is used as the colorant) from precipitating. Also, it is important that the silicon-containing nutrient be kept away from the other ingredients to prevent nucleation and confine growth to the seed crystals. Growth occurs by a diffusion-reaction process, assisted by convection. The largest producer of hydrothermal emeralds today is Tairus, which has succeeded in synthesizing emeralds with chemical composition similar to emeralds in alkaline deposits in Colombia, and whose products are thus known as "Colombian created emeralds" or "Tairus created emeralds". Luminescence in ultraviolet light is considered a supplementary test when making a natural versus synthetic determination, as many, but not all, natural emeralds are inert to ultraviolet light. Many synthetics are also UV inert. Synthetic emeralds are often referred to as "created", as their chemical and gemological composition is the same as their natural counterparts. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has very strict regulations as to what can and what cannot be called a "synthetic" stone. The FTC says: "§ 23.23(c) It is unfair or deceptive to use the word "laboratory-grown", "laboratory-created", "[manufacturer name]-created", or "synthetic" with the name of any natural stone to describe any industry product unless such industry product has essentially the same optical, physical, and chemical properties as the stone named." Historical and cultural references The virtue of the Emerald is to counteract poison. They say that if a venomous animal should look at it, it will become blinded. The gem also acts as a preservative against epilepsy; it cures leprosy, strengthens sight and memory, checks copulation, during which act it will break, if worn at the time on the finger. Notable emeralds Gallery See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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Contents OpenAI OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence research organization comprising both a non-profit foundation and a controlled for-profit public benefit corporation (PBC), headquartered in San Francisco. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". OpenAI is widely recognized for its development of the GPT family of large language models, the DALL-E series of text-to-image models, and the Sora series of text-to-video models, which have influenced industry research and commercial applications. Its release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has been credited with catalyzing widespread interest in generative AI. The organization was founded in 2015 in Delaware but evolved a complex corporate structure. As of October 2025, following restructuring approved by California and Delaware regulators, the non-profit OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, with Microsoft holding 27% and employees/other investors holding 47%. Under its governance arrangements, the OpenAI Foundation holds the authority to appoint the board of the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, a mechanism designed to align the entity’s strategic direction with the Foundation’s charter. Microsoft previously invested over $13 billion into OpenAI, and provides Azure cloud computing resources. In October 2025, OpenAI conducted a $6.6 billion share sale that valued the company at $500 billion. In 2023 and 2024, OpenAI faced multiple lawsuits for alleged copyright infringement against authors and media companies whose work was used to train some of OpenAI's products. In November 2023, OpenAI's board removed Sam Altman as CEO, citing a lack of confidence in him, but reinstated him five days later following a reconstruction of the board. Throughout 2024, roughly half of then-employed AI safety researchers left OpenAI, citing the company's prominent role in an industry-wide problem. Founding In December 2015, OpenAI was founded as a not for profit organization by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as the co-chairs. A total of $1 billion in capital was pledged by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Infosys. However, the actual capital collected significantly lagged pledges. According to company disclosures, only $130 million had been received by 2019. In its founding charter, OpenAI stated an intention to collaborate openly with other institutions by making certain patents and research publicly available, but later restricted access to its most capable models, citing competitive and safety concerns. OpenAI was initially run from Brockman's living room. It was later headquartered at the Pioneer Building in the Mission District, San Francisco. According to OpenAI's charter, its founding mission is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity." Musk and Altman stated in 2015 that they were partly motivated by concerns about AI safety and existential risk from artificial general intelligence. OpenAI stated that "it's hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society", and that it is equally difficult to comprehend "how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly". The startup also wrote that AI "should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible", and that "because of AI's surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it'll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest." Co-chair Sam Altman expected a decades-long project that eventually surpasses human intelligence. Brockman met with Yoshua Bengio, one of the "founding fathers" of deep learning, and drew up a list of great AI researchers. Brockman was able to hire nine of them as the first employees in December 2015. OpenAI did not pay AI researchers salaries comparable to those of Facebook or Google. It also did not pay stock options which AI researchers typically get. Nevertheless, OpenAI spent $7 million on its first 52 employees in 2016. OpenAI's potential and mission drew these researchers to the firm; a Google employee said he was willing to leave Google for OpenAI "partly because of the very strong group of people and, to a very large extent, because of its mission." OpenAI co-founder Wojciech Zaremba stated that he turned down "borderline crazy" offers of two to three times his market value to join OpenAI instead. In April 2016, OpenAI released a public beta of "OpenAI Gym", its platform for reinforcement learning research. Nvidia gifted its first DGX-1 supercomputer to OpenAI in August 2016 to help it train larger and more complex AI models with the capability of reducing processing time from six days to two hours. In December 2016, OpenAI released "Universe", a software platform for measuring and training an AI's general intelligence across the world's supply of games, websites, and other applications. Corporate structure In 2019, OpenAI transitioned from non-profit to "capped" for-profit, with the profit being capped at 100 times any investment. According to OpenAI, the capped-profit model allows OpenAI Global, LLC to legally attract investment from venture funds and, in addition, to grant employees stakes in the company. Many top researchers work for Google Brain, DeepMind, or Facebook, which offer equity that a nonprofit would be unable to match. Before the transition, OpenAI was legally required to publicly disclose the compensation of its top employees. The company then distributed equity to its employees and partnered with Microsoft, announcing an investment package of $1 billion into the company. Since then, OpenAI systems have run on an Azure-based supercomputing platform from Microsoft. OpenAI Global, LLC then announced its intention to commercially license its technologies. It planned to spend $1 billion "within five years, and possibly much faster". Altman stated that even a billion dollars may turn out to be insufficient, and that the lab may ultimately need "more capital than any non-profit has ever raised" to achieve artificial general intelligence. The nonprofit, OpenAI, Inc., is the sole controlling shareholder of OpenAI Global, LLC, which, despite being a for-profit company, retains a formal fiduciary responsibility to OpenAI, Inc.'s nonprofit charter. A majority of OpenAI, Inc.'s board is barred from having financial stakes in OpenAI Global, LLC. In addition, minority members with a stake in OpenAI Global, LLC are barred from certain votes due to conflict of interest. Some researchers have argued that OpenAI Global, LLC's switch to for-profit status is inconsistent with OpenAI's claims to be "democratizing" AI. On February 29, 2024, Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of shifting focus from public benefit to profit maximization—a case OpenAI dismissed as "incoherent" and "frivolous," though Musk later revived legal action against Altman and others in August. On April 9, 2024, OpenAI countersued Musk in federal court, alleging that he had engaged in "bad-faith tactics" to slow the company's progress and seize its innovations for his personal benefit. OpenAI also argued that Musk had previously supported the creation of a for-profit structure and had expressed interest in controlling OpenAI himself. The countersuit seeks damages and legal measures to prevent further alleged interference. On February 10, 2025, a consortium of investors led by Elon Musk submitted a $97.4 billion unsolicited bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, declaring willingness to match or exceed any better offer. The offer was rejected on 14 February 2025, with OpenAI stating that it was not for sale, but the offer complicated Altman's restructuring plan by suggesting a lower bar for how much the nonprofit should be valued. OpenAI, Inc. was originally designed as a nonprofit in order to ensure that AGI "benefits all of humanity" rather than "the private gain of any person". In 2019, it created OpenAI Global, LLC, a capped-profit subsidiary controlled by the nonprofit. In December 2024, OpenAI proposed a restructuring plan to convert the capped-profit into a Delaware-based public benefit corporation (PBC), and to release it from the control of the nonprofit. The nonprofit would sell its control and other assets, getting equity in return, and would use it to fund and pursue separate charitable projects, including in science and education. OpenAI's leadership described the change as necessary to secure additional investments, and claimed that the nonprofit's founding mission to ensure AGI "benefits all of humanity" would be better fulfilled. The plan has been criticized by former employees. A legal letter named "Not For Private Gain" asked the attorneys general of California and Delaware to intervene, stating that the restructuring is illegal and would remove governance safeguards from the nonprofit and the attorneys general. The letter argues that OpenAI's complex structure was deliberately designed to remain accountable to its mission, without the conflicting pressure of maximizing profits. It contends that the nonprofit is best positioned to advance its mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity by continuing to control OpenAI Global, LLC, whatever the amount of equity that it could get in exchange. PBCs can choose how they balance their mission with profit-making. Controlling shareholders have a large influence on how closely a PBC sticks to its mission. On October 28, 2025, OpenAI announced that it had adopted the new PBC corporate structure after receiving approval from the attorneys general of California and Delaware. Under the new structure, OpenAI's for-profit branch became a public benefit corporation known as OpenAI Group PBC, while the non-profit was renamed to the OpenAI Foundation. The OpenAI Foundation holds a 26% stake in the PBC, while Microsoft holds a 27% stake and the remaining 47% is owned by employees and other investors. All members of the OpenAI Group PBC board of directors will be appointed by the OpenAI Foundation, which can remove them at any time. Members of the Foundation's board will also serve on the for-profit board. The new structure allows the for-profit PBC to raise investor funds like most traditional tech companies, including through an initial public offering, which Altman claimed was the most likely path forward. In January 2023, OpenAI Global, LLC was in talks for funding that would value the company at $29 billion, double its 2021 value. On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new US$10 billion investment in OpenAI Global, LLC over multiple years, partially needed to use Microsoft's cloud-computing service Azure. From September to December, 2023, Microsoft rebranded all variants of its Copilot to Microsoft Copilot, and they added MS-Copilot to many installations of Windows and released Microsoft Copilot mobile apps. Following OpenAI's 2025 restructuring, Microsoft owns a 27% stake in the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC, valued at $135 billion. In a deal announced the same day, OpenAI agreed to purchase $250 billion of Azure services, with Microsoft ceding their right of first refusal over OpenAI's future cloud computing purchases. As part of the deal, OpenAI will continue to share 20% of its revenue with Microsoft until it achieves AGI, which must now be verified by an independent panel of experts. The deal also loosened restrictions on both companies working with third parties, allowing Microsoft to pursue AGI independently and allowing OpenAI to develop products with other companies. In 2017, OpenAI spent $7.9 million, a quarter of its functional expenses, on cloud computing alone. In comparison, DeepMind's total expenses in 2017 were $442 million. In the summer of 2018, training OpenAI's Dota 2 bots required renting 128,000 CPUs and 256 GPUs from Google for multiple weeks. In October 2024, OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion capital raise with a $157 billion valuation including investments from Microsoft, Nvidia, and SoftBank. On January 21, 2025, Donald Trump announced The Stargate Project, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX to build an AI infrastructure system in conjunction with the US government. The project takes its name from OpenAI's existing "Stargate" supercomputer project and is estimated to cost $500 billion. The partners planned to fund the project over the next four years. In July, the United States Department of Defense announced that OpenAI had received a $200 million contract for AI in the military, along with Anthropic, Google, and xAI. In the same month, the company made a deal with the UK Government to use ChatGPT and other AI tools in public services. OpenAI subsequently began a $50 million fund to support nonprofit and community organizations. In April 2025, OpenAI raised $40 billion at a $300 billion post-money valuation, which was the highest-value private technology deal in history. The financing round was led by SoftBank, with other participants including Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive. In July 2025, the company reported annualized revenue of $12 billion. This was an increase from $3.7 billion in 2024, which was driven by ChatGPT subscriptions, which reached 20 million paid subscribers by April 2025, up from 15.5 million at the end of 2024, alongside a rapidly expanding enterprise customer base that grew to five million business users. The company’s cash burn remains high because of the intensive computational costs required to train and operate large language models. It projects an $8 billion operating loss in 2025. OpenAI reports revised long-term spending projections totaling approximately $115 billion through 2029, with annual expenditures projected to escalate significantly, reaching $17 billion in 2026, $35 billion in 2027, and $45 billion in 2028. These expenditures are primarily allocated toward expanding compute infrastructure, developing proprietary AI chips, constructing data centers, and funding intensive model training programs, with more than half of the spending through the end of the decade expected to support research-intensive compute for model training and development. The company's financial strategy prioritizes market expansion and technological advancement over near-term profitability, with OpenAI targeting cash-flow-positive operations by 2029 and projecting revenue of approximately $200 billion by 2030. This aggressive spending trajectory underscores both the enormous capital requirements of scaling cutting-edge AI technology and OpenAI's commitment to maintaining its position as a leader in the artificial intelligence industry. In October 2025, OpenAI completed an employee share sale of up to $10 billion to existing investors which valued the company at $500 billion. The deal values OpenAI as the most valuable privately owned company in the world—surpassing SpaceX as the world's most valuable private company. On November 17, 2023, Sam Altman was removed as CEO when its board of directors (composed of Helen Toner, Ilya Sutskever, Adam D'Angelo and Tasha McCauley) cited a lack of confidence in him. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati took over as interim CEO. Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, was also removed as chairman of the board and resigned from the company's presidency shortly thereafter. Three senior OpenAI researchers subsequently resigned: director of research and GPT-4 lead Jakub Pachocki, head of AI risk Aleksander Mądry, and researcher Szymon Sidor. On November 18, 2023, there were reportedly talks of Altman returning as CEO amid pressure placed upon the board by investors such as Microsoft and Thrive Capital, who objected to Altman's departure. Although Altman himself spoke in favor of returning to OpenAI, he has since stated that he considered starting a new company and bringing former OpenAI employees with him if talks to reinstate him didn't work out. The board members agreed "in principle" to resign if Altman returned. On November 19, 2023, negotiations with Altman to return failed and Murati was replaced by Emmett Shear as interim CEO. The board initially contacted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (a former OpenAI executive) about replacing Altman, and proposed a merger of the two companies, but both offers were declined. On November 20, 2023, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Altman and Brockman would be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team, but added that they were still committed to OpenAI despite recent events. Before the partnership with Microsoft was finalized, Altman gave the board another opportunity to negotiate with him. About 738 of OpenAI's 770 employees, including Murati and Sutskever, signed an open letter stating they would quit their jobs and join Microsoft if the board did not rehire Altman and then resign. This prompted OpenAI investors to consider legal action against the board as well. In response, OpenAI management sent an internal memo to employees stating that negotiations with Altman and the board had resumed and would take some time. On November 21, 2023, after continued negotiations, Altman and Brockman returned to the company in their prior roles along with a reconstructed board made up of new members Bret Taylor (as chairman) and Lawrence Summers, with D'Angelo remaining. According to subsequent reporting, shortly before Altman’s firing, some employees raised concerns to the board about how he had handled the safety implications of a recent internal AI capability discovery. On November 29, 2023, OpenAI announced that an anonymous Microsoft employee had joined the board as a non-voting member to observe the company's operations; Microsoft resigned from the board in July 2024. In February 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed OpenAI's internal communication to determine if Altman's alleged lack of candor misled investors. In 2024, following the temporary removal of Sam Altman and his return, many employees gradually left OpenAI, including most of the original leadership team and a significant number of AI safety researchers. In August 2023, it was announced that OpenAI had acquired the New York-based start-up Global Illumination, a company that deploys AI to develop digital infrastructure and creative tools. In June 2024, OpenAI acquired Multi, a startup focused on remote collaboration. In March 2025, OpenAI reached a deal with CoreWeave to acquire $350 million worth of CoreWeave shares and access to AI infrastructure, in return for $11.9 billion paid over five years. Microsoft was already CoreWeave's biggest customer in 2024. Alongside their other business dealings, OpenAI and Microsoft were renegotiating the terms of their partnership to facilitate a potential future initial public offering by OpenAI, while ensuring Microsoft's continued access to advanced AI models. On May 21, OpenAI announced the $6.5 billion acquisition of io, an AI hardware start-up founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive in 2024. In September 2025, OpenAI agreed to acquire the product testing startup Statsig for $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal and appointed Statsig's founding CEO Vijaye Raji as OpenAI's chief technology officer of applications. The company also announced development of an AI-driven hiring service designed to rival LinkedIn. OpenAI acquired personal finance app Roi in October 2025. In October 2025, OpenAI acquired Software Applications Incorporated, the developer of Sky, a macOS-based natural language interface designed to operate across desktop applications. The Sky team joined OpenAI, and the company announced plans to integrate Sky’s capabilities into ChatGPT. In December 2025, it was announced OpenAI had agreed to acquire Neptune, an AI tooling startup that helps companies track and manage model training, for an undisclosed amount. In January 2026, it was announced OpenAI had acquired healthcare technology startup Torch for approximately $60 million. The acquisition followed the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Health product and was intended to strengthen the company’s medical data and healthcare artificial intelligence capabilities. OpenAI has been criticized for outsourcing the annotation of data sets to Sama, a company based in San Francisco that employed workers in Kenya. These annotations were used to train an AI model to detect toxicity, which could then be used to moderate toxic content, notably from ChatGPT's training data and outputs. However, these pieces of text usually contained detailed descriptions of various types of violence, including sexual violence. The investigation uncovered that OpenAI began sending snippets of data to Sama as early as November 2021. The four Sama employees interviewed by Time described themselves as mentally scarred. OpenAI paid Sama $12.50 per hour of work, and Sama was redistributing the equivalent of between $1.32 and $2.00 per hour post-tax to its annotators. Sama's spokesperson said that the $12.50 was also covering other implicit costs, among which were infrastructure expenses, quality assurance and management. In 2024, OpenAI began collaborating with Broadcom to design a custom AI chip capable of both training and inference, targeted for mass production in 2026 and to be manufactured by TSMC on a 3 nm process node. This initiative intended to reduce OpenAI's dependence on Nvidia GPUs, which are costly and face high demand in the market. In January 2024, Arizona State University purchased ChatGPT Enterprise in OpenAI's first deal with a university. In June 2024, Apple Inc. signed a contract with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT features into its products as part of its new Apple Intelligence initiative. In June 2025, OpenAI began renting Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to support ChatGPT and related services, marking its first meaningful use of non‑Nvidia AI chips. In September 2025, it was revealed that OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to purchase $300 billion in computing power over the next five years. In September 2025, OpenAI and NVIDIA announced a memorandum of understanding that included a potential deployment of at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems and a $100 billion investment from NVIDIA in OpenAI. OpenAI expected the negotiations to be completed within weeks. As of January 2026, this has not been realized, and the two sides are rethinking the future of their partnership. In October 2025, OpenAI announced a multi-billion dollar deal with AMD. OpenAI committed to purchasing six gigawatts worth of AMD chips, starting with the MI450. OpenAI will have the option to buy up to 160 million shares of AMD, about 10% of the company, depending on development, performance and share price targets. In December 2025, Disney said it would make a $1 billion investment in OpenAI, and signed a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate videos using Sora—OpenAI's short-form AI video platform. More than 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar characters will be available to OpenAI users. In early 2026, Amazon entered advanced discussions to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a potential artificial intelligence partnership. Under the proposed agreement, OpenAI’s models could be integrated into Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa and other internal projects. OpenAI provides LLMs to the Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge and to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. In October 2024, The Intercept revealed that OpenAI's tools are considered "essential" for AFRICOM's mission and included in an "Exception to Fair Opportunity" contractual agreement between the United States Department of Defense and Microsoft. In December 2024, OpenAI said it would partner with defense-tech company Anduril to build drone defense technologies for the United States and its allies. In 2025, OpenAI's Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil, was commissioned lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army to join Detachment 201 as senior advisor. In June 2025, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded OpenAI a $200 million one-year contract to develop AI tools for military and national security applications. OpenAI announced a new program, OpenAI for Government, to give federal, state, and local governments access to its models, including ChatGPT. Services In February 2019, GPT-2 was announced, which gained attention for its ability to generate human-like text. In 2020, OpenAI announced GPT-3, a language model trained on large internet datasets. GPT-3 is aimed at natural language answering questions, but it can also translate between languages and coherently generate improvised text. It also announced that an associated API, named the API, would form the heart of its first commercial product. Eleven employees left OpenAI, mostly between December 2020 and January 2021, in order to establish Anthropic. In 2021, OpenAI introduced DALL-E, a specialized deep learning model adept at generating complex digital images from textual descriptions, utilizing a variant of the GPT-3 architecture. In December 2022, OpenAI received widespread media coverage after launching a free preview of ChatGPT, its new AI chatbot based on GPT-3.5. According to OpenAI, the preview received over a million signups within the first five days. According to anonymous sources cited by Reuters in December 2022, OpenAI Global, LLC was projecting $200 million of revenue in 2023 and $1 billion in revenue in 2024. After ChatGPT was launched, Google announced a similar chatbot, Bard, amid internal concerns that ChatGPT could threaten Google’s position as a primary source of online information. On February 7, 2023, Microsoft announced that it was building AI technology based on the same foundation as ChatGPT into Microsoft Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365 and other products. On March 14, 2023, OpenAI released GPT-4, both as an API (with a waitlist) and as a feature of ChatGPT Plus. On November 6, 2023, OpenAI launched GPTs, allowing individuals to create customized versions of ChatGPT for specific purposes, further expanding the possibilities of AI applications across various industries. On November 14, 2023, OpenAI announced they temporarily suspended new sign-ups for ChatGPT Plus due to high demand. Access for newer subscribers re-opened a month later on December 13. In December 2024, the company launched the Sora model. It also launched OpenAI o1, an early reasoning model that was internally codenamed strawberry. Additionally, ChatGPT Pro—a $200/month subscription service offering unlimited o1 access and enhanced voice features—was introduced, and preliminary benchmark results for the upcoming OpenAI o3 models were shared. On January 23, 2025, OpenAI released Operator, an AI agent and web automation tool for accessing websites to execute goals defined by users. The feature was only available to Pro users in the United States. OpenAI released deep research agent, nine days later. It scored a 27% accuracy on the benchmark Humanity's Last Exam (HLE). Altman later stated GPT-4.5 would be the last model without full chain-of-thought reasoning. In July 2025, reports indicated that AI models by both OpenAI and Google DeepMind solved mathematics problems at the level of top-performing students in the International Mathematical Olympiad. OpenAI's large language model was able to achieve gold medal-level performance, reflecting significant progress in AI's reasoning abilities. On October 6, 2025, OpenAI unveiled its Agent Builder platform during the company's DevDay event. The platform includes a visual drag-and-drop interface that lets developers and businesses design, test, and deploy agentic workflows with limited coding. On October 21, 2025, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Atlas, a browser integrating the ChatGPT assistant directly into web navigation, to compete with existing browsers such as Google Chrome and Apple Safari. On December 11, 2025, OpenAI announced GPT-5.2. This model will be better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, perceiving images, writing code and understanding long context. On January 27, 2026, OpenAI introduced Prism, a LaTeX-native workspace meant to assist scientists to help with research and writing. The platform utilizes GPT-5.2 as a backend to automate the process of drafting for scientific papers, including features for managing citations, complex equation formatting, and real-time collaborative editing. In March 2023, the company was criticized for disclosing particularly few technical details about products like GPT-4, contradicting its initial commitment to openness and making it harder for independent researchers to replicate its work and develop safeguards. OpenAI cited competitiveness and safety concerns to justify this repudiation. OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever argued in 2023 that open-sourcing increasingly capable models was increasingly risky, and that the safety reasons for not open-sourcing the most potent AI models would become "obvious" in a few years. In September 2025, OpenAI published a study on how people use ChatGPT for everyday tasks. The study found that "non-work tasks" (according to an LLM-based classifier) account for more than 72 percent of all ChatGPT usage, with a minority of overall usage related to business productivity. In July 2023, OpenAI launched the superalignment project, aiming within four years to determine how to align future superintelligent systems. OpenAI promised to dedicate 20% of its computing resources to the project, although the team denied receiving anything close to 20%. OpenAI ended the project in May 2024 after its co-leaders Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike left the company. In August 2025, OpenAI was criticized after thousands of private ChatGPT conversations were inadvertently exposed to public search engines like Google due to an experimental "share with search engines" feature. The opt-in toggle, intended to allow users to make specific chats discoverable, resulted in some discussions including personal details such as names, locations, and intimate topics appearing in search results when users accidentally enabled it while sharing links. OpenAI announced the feature's permanent removal on August 1, 2025, and the company began coordinating with search providers to remove the exposed content, emphasizing that it was not a security breach but a design flaw that heightened privacy risks. CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the issue in a podcast, noting users often treat ChatGPT as a confidant for deeply personal matters, which amplified concerns about AI handling sensitive data. Management In 2018, Musk resigned from his Board of Directors seat, citing "a potential future conflict [of interest]" with his role as CEO of Tesla due to Tesla's AI development for self-driving cars. OpenAI stated that Musk's financial contributions were below $45 million. On March 3, 2023, Reid Hoffman resigned from his board seat, citing a desire to avoid conflicts of interest with his investments in AI companies via Greylock Partners, and his co-founding of the AI startup Inflection AI. Hoffman remained on the board of Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI. In May 2024, Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned and was succeeded by Jakub Pachocki. Co-leader Jan Leike also departed amid concerns over safety and trust. OpenAI then signed deals with Reddit, News Corp, Axios, and Vox Media. Paul Nakasone then joined the board of OpenAI. In August 2024, cofounder John Schulman left OpenAI to join Anthropic, and OpenAI's president Greg Brockman took extended leave until November. In September 2024, CTO Mira Murati left the company. In November 2025, Lawrence Summers resigned from the board of directors. Governance and legal issues In May 2023, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever posted recommendations for the governance of superintelligence. They stated that superintelligence could happen within the next 10 years, allowing a "dramatically more prosperous future" and that "given the possibility of existential risk, we can't just be reactive". They proposed creating an international watchdog organization similar to IAEA to oversee AI systems above a certain capability threshold, suggesting that relatively weak AI systems on the other side should not be overly regulated. They also called for more technical safety research for superintelligences, and asked for more coordination, for example through governments launching a joint project which "many current efforts become part of". In July 2023, the FTC issued a civil investigative demand to OpenAI to investigate whether the company's data security and privacy practices to develop ChatGPT were unfair or harmed consumers (including by reputational harm) in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These are typically preliminary investigative matters and are nonpublic, but the FTC's document was leaked. In July 2023, the FTC launched an investigation into OpenAI over allegations that the company scraped public data and published false and defamatory information. They asked OpenAI for comprehensive information about its technology and privacy safeguards, as well as any steps taken to prevent the recurrence of situations in which its chatbot generated false and derogatory content about people. The agency also raised concerns about ‘circular’ spending arrangements—for example, Microsoft extending Azure credits to OpenAI while both companies shared engineering talent—and warned that such structures could negatively affect the public. In September 2024, OpenAI's global affairs chief endorsed the UK's "smart" AI regulation during testimony to a House of Lords committee. In February 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the company is interested in collaborating with the People's Republic of China, despite regulatory restrictions imposed by the U.S. government. This shift comes in response to the growing influence of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, which has disrupted the AI market with open models, including DeepSeek V3 and DeepSeek R1. Following DeepSeek's market emergence, OpenAI enhanced security protocols to protect proprietary development techniques from industrial espionage. Some industry observers noted similarities between DeepSeek's model distillation approach and OpenAI's methodology, though no formal intellectual property claim was filed. According to Oliver Roberts, in March 2025, the United States had 781 state AI bills or laws. OpenAI advocated for preempting state AI laws with federal laws. According to Scott Kohler, OpenAI has opposed California's AI legislation and suggested that the state bill encroaches on a more competent federal government. Public Citizen opposed a federal preemption on AI and pointed to OpenAI's growth and valuation as evidence that existing state laws have not hampered innovation. Before May 2024, OpenAI required departing employees to sign a lifelong non-disparagement agreement forbidding them from criticizing OpenAI and acknowledging the existence of the agreement. Daniel Kokotajlo, a former employee, publicly stated that he forfeited his vested equity in OpenAI in order to leave without signing the agreement. Sam Altman stated that he was unaware of the equity cancellation provision, and that OpenAI never enforced it to cancel any employee's vested equity. However, leaked documents and emails refute this claim. On May 23, 2024, OpenAI sent a memo releasing former employees from the agreement. OpenAI was sued for copyright infringement by authors Sarah Silverman, Matthew Butterick, Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad in July 2023. In September 2023, 17 authors, including George R. R. Martin, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and Jonathan Franzen, joined the Authors Guild in filing a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the company's technology was illegally using their copyrighted work. The New York Times also sued the company in late December 2023. In May 2024 it was revealed that OpenAI had destroyed its Books1 and Books2 training datasets, which were used in the training of GPT-3, and which the Authors Guild believed to have contained over 100,000 copyrighted books. In 2021, OpenAI developed a speech recognition tool called Whisper. OpenAI used it to transcribe more than one million hours of YouTube videos into text for training GPT-4. The automated transcription of YouTube videos raised concerns within OpenAI employees regarding potential violations of YouTube's terms of service, which prohibit the use of videos for applications independent of the platform, as well as any type of automated access to its videos. Despite these concerns, the project proceeded with notable involvement from OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman. The resulting dataset proved instrumental in training GPT-4. In February 2024, The Intercept as well as Raw Story and Alternate Media Inc. filed lawsuit against OpenAI on copyright litigation ground. The lawsuit is said to have charted a new legal strategy for digital-only publishers to sue OpenAI. On April 30, 2024, eight newspapers filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming illegal harvesting of their copyrighted articles. The suing publications included The Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Sun Sentinel, and New York Daily News. In June 2023, a lawsuit claimed that OpenAI scraped 300 billion words online without consent and without registering as a data broker. It was filed in San Francisco, California, by sixteen anonymous plaintiffs. They also claimed that OpenAI and its partner as well as customer Microsoft continued to unlawfully collect and use personal data from millions of consumers worldwide to train artificial intelligence models. On May 22, 2024, OpenAI entered into an agreement with News Corp to integrate news content from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times, and The Sunday Times into its AI platform. Meanwhile, other publications like The New York Times chose to sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement over the use of their content to train AI models. In November 2024, a coalition of Canadian news outlets, including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC, sued OpenAI for using their news articles to train its software without permission. In October 2024 during a New York Times interview, Suchir Balaji accused OpenAI of violating copyright law in developing its commercial LLMs which he had helped engineer. He was a likely witness in a major copyright trial against the AI company, and was one of several of its current or former employees named in court filings as potentially having documents relevant to the case. On November 26, 2024, Balaji died by suicide. His death prompted the circulation of conspiracy theories alleging that he had been deliberately silenced. California Congressman Ro Khanna endorsed calls for an investigation. On April 24, 2025, Ziff Davis sued OpenAI in Delaware federal court for copyright infringement. Ziff Davis is known for publications such as ZDNet, PCMag, CNET, IGN and Lifehacker. In April 2023, the EU's European Data Protection Board (EDPB) formed a dedicated task force on ChatGPT "to foster cooperation and to exchange information on possible enforcement actions conducted by data protection authorities" based on the "enforcement action undertaken by the Italian data protection authority against OpenAI about the ChatGPT service". In late April 2024 NOYB filed a complaint with the Austrian Datenschutzbehörde against OpenAI for violating the European General Data Protection Regulation. A text created with ChatGPT gave a false date of birth for a living person without giving the individual the option to see the personal data used in the process. A request to correct the mistake was denied. Additionally, neither the recipients of ChatGPT's work nor the sources used, could be made available, OpenAI claimed. OpenAI was criticized for lifting its ban on using ChatGPT for "military and warfare". Up until January 10, 2024, its "usage policies" included a ban on "activity that has high risk of physical harm, including", specifically, "weapons development" and "military and warfare". Its new policies prohibit "[using] our service to harm yourself or others" and to "develop or use weapons". In August 2025, the parents of a 16-year-old boy who died by suicide filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI (and CEO Sam Altman), alleging that months of conversations with ChatGPT about mental health and methods of self-harm contributed to their son's death and that safeguards were inadequate for minors. OpenAI expressed condolences and said it was strengthening protections (including updated crisis response behavior and parental controls). Coverage described it as a first-of-its-kind wrongful death case targeting the company's chatbot. The complaint was filed in California state court in San Francisco. In November 2025, the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project filed seven lawsuits against OpenAI, of which four lawsuits alleged wrongful death. The suits were filed on behalf of Zane Shamblin, 23, of Texas; Amaurie Lacey, 17, of Georgia; Joshua Enneking, 26, of Florida; and Joe Ceccanti, 48, of Oregon, who each committed suicide after prolonged ChatGPT usage. In December 2025, Stein-Erik Soelberg, who was 56 years old at the time, allegedly murdered his mother Suzanne Adams. In the months prior the paranoid, delusional man often discussed his ideas with ChatGPT. Adam's estate then sued OpenAI claiming that the company shared responsibility due to the risk of chatbot psychosis despite the fact that chatbot psychosis is not a real medical diagnosis. OpenAI responded saying they will make ChatGPT safer for users disconnected from reality. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a nontrinitarian, millenarian, and restorationist Christian denomination, stemming from the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. Russell co-founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society in 1881 to organize and print the movement's publications. A leadership dispute after Russell's death resulted in several groups breaking away, with Joseph Franklin Rutherford retaining control of the Watch Tower Society and its properties. Rutherford made significant organizational and doctrinal changes, including adoption of the name Jehovah's witnesses[en 1] in 1931 to distinguish the group from other Bible Student groups and symbolize a break with the legacy of Russell's traditions. In 2025, Jehovah's Witnesses reported a peak membership of approximately 9.2 million worldwide. Jehovah's Witnesses are known for their evangelism, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake!, and for refusing military service and blood transfusions. They consider the use of God's name vital for proper worship. They reject Trinitarianism, inherent immortality of the soul, and hell, which they consider unscriptural doctrines. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent, and the establishment of God's kingdom over earth is the only solution to all of humanity's problems. They do not observe Christmas, Easter, birthdays, or other holidays and customs they consider to have pagan origins incompatible with Christianity. They prefer to use their own Bible translation, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Jehovah's Witnesses consider human society morally corrupt and under the influence of Satan, and most limit their social interaction with non-Witnesses. The denomination is directed by a group known as the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, which establishes all doctrines. Congregational disciplinary actions include formal expulsion and shunning, for what they consider serious offenses. Members who formally leave are considered to be disassociated and are also shunned. Some members who leave voluntarily successfully "fade" without being shunned. Former members may experience significant mental distress as a result of being shunned, and some seek reinstatement to maintain contact with their friends and family. The group's position on conscientious objection to military service and refusal to salute state symbols—for example, national anthems and flags—has brought it into conflict with several governments. Jehovah's Witnesses have been persecuted, with their activities banned or restricted in some countries. Persistent legal challenges by Jehovah's Witnesses have influenced legislation related to civil rights in several countries. The organization has been criticized regarding biblical translation, doctrines, and alleged coercion of its members. The Watch Tower Society has made unfulfilled predictions about major biblical events, such as Jesus' Second Coming, the advent of God's kingdom, and Armageddon. Their policies for handling cases of child sexual abuse have been the subject of various formal inquiries. Demographics Jehovah's Witnesses have an active presence in most countries. In 2025, Jehovah's Witnesses reported approximately 9 million publishers—the term they use for members actively involved in preaching—in about 119,500 congregations. In the same year, they conducted Bible studies with 7,603,182 individuals (including those conducted by Witness parents with their children). 4,091 members served as missionaries in 2021. In 2025, Jehovah's Witnesses reported a worldwide annual increase of 2.5%. 20,635,015 people attended the annual memorial of Christ's death. The official published membership statistics, such as those above, include only those who submit reports for their personal ministry. As a result, only about half of those who self-identify as Jehovah's Witnesses in independent demographic studies are considered active by the faith itself. Research regarding the demographics of Jehovah's Witnesses is incredibly limited; sample sizes tend to be small and focused to a specific region. Cross-cultural studies are "virtually non-existent". The 2008 US Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey found a low retention rate among members of the denomination: about 37% of people raised in the group continued to identify as Jehovah's Witnesses. The next lowest retention rates were for Buddhism at 50% and Catholicism at 68%. The study also found that 65% of adult American Jehovah's Witnesses are converts. In 2016, Jehovah's Witnesses had the lowest average household income among surveyed religious groups, with approximately half of Witness households in the United States earning less than $30,000 per year. As of 2016, Jehovah's Witnesses were considered to be the most racially diverse Christian denomination in the United States. A sociological comparative study by the Pew Research Center found that American Jehovah's Witnesses ranked highest in belief in God, importance of religion in one's life, frequency of religious attendance, frequency of prayers, frequency of Bible reading outside of religious services, belief that their prayers are answered, belief that their religion can only be interpreted one way, belief that theirs is the only one true faith leading to eternal life, opposition to abortion, and opposition to homosexuality. Jehovah's Witnesses also ranked lowest in interest in politics. History Scholarly analysis of Jehovah's Witnesses is limited in academia, with most works focusing on legal challenges faced by the group. The denomination does not cooperate with scholars beyond limited communication from anonymous individuals. Consequently, academics often rely on literature written by former members such as James Penton and Raymond Franz to understand its inner workings. The denomination has been variously described as a church, sect, new religious movement, or cult. Usage of the various terms has been debated among sociologists. When the term sect is used by sociologists, it is within the framework of church-sect typology for their activities within a specific country. Sociologists from the 1940s to the 1960s frequently compared the group's structure with totalitarianism. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, sociologists determined that cult was a reductionist label when applied to Jehovah's Witnesses, noting that new members did not undergo "sudden transformations" and made a rational choice to join the group. Academics generally stopped using the term cult in the 1980s due to its pejorative association and its usage by the Christian countercult movement, with new religious movement largely replacing it. Scholars George Chryssides and Zoe Knox avoid using the term new religious movement because it also has negative connotations. Chryssides refers to the denomination as an "old new religion". In 1870, Charles Taze Russell and others formed a group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to study the Bible. During his ministry, Russell disputed many of mainstream Christianity's tenets, including immortality of the soul, hellfire, predestination, Christ's return, the Trinity, and the burning up of the world. In 1876, he met Nelson H. Barbour. Later that year they jointly produced the book Three Worlds, which combined restitutionist views with end time prophecy. The book taught that God's dealings with humanity were divided dispensationally, with each period ending with a "harvest", and that Jesus inaugurated the "harvest of the Gospel age" by means of his invisible return in 1874. The book asserted that 1914 would mark the end of a 2,520-year period called "the Gentile Times", at which time world society would be replaced by the full establishment of God's kingdom on earth. Beginning in 1878, Russell and Barbour jointly edited a religious magazine, Herald of the Morning. In June 1879, the two split over doctrinal differences, and in July, Russell began publishing the magazine Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, saying its purpose was to demonstrate that the world was in "the last days" and that a new age of earthly and human restitution under Jesus' reign was imminent. From 1879, Watch Tower supporters gathered as autonomous congregations to study the Bible topically. Thirty congregations were founded, and during 1879 and 1880, Russell visited each to provide the format he recommended for conducting meetings. In 1881, Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society was presided over by William Henry Conley, and in 1884, Russell incorporated the society as a nonprofit business to distribute tracts and Bibles. He also published a six book series entitled Studies in the Scriptures. By about 1900, Russell had organized thousands of part- and full-time colporteurs, and was appointing foreign missionaries and establishing branch offices. By the 1910s, Russell's organization maintained nearly a hundred "pilgrims", or traveling preachers. Russell engaged in significant global publishing efforts during his ministry, and by 1912, he was the most distributed Christian author in the United States. He also directed The Photo-Drama of Creation, an eight-hour audiovisual presentation featuring biblical accounts. Russell moved the Watch Tower Society's headquarters to Brooklyn, New York, in 1909, combining printing and corporate offices with a house of worship; volunteers were housed in a nearby residence he named Bethel. He identified the religious movement as "Bible Students", and more formally as the International Bible Students Association. By 1910, about 50,000 people worldwide were associated with the movement and congregations reelected him annually as their pastor. Russell died on October 31, 1916, at the age of 64 while returning from a ministerial speaking tour. In January 1917, the Watch Tower Society's legal representative, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, was elected as its next president. His election was disputed, and members of the Board of Directors accused him of acting in an autocratic and secretive manner. The divisions between his supporters and opponents triggered a major turnover of members over the next decade. Because of disappointment over the changes and unfulfilled predictions, tens of thousands of defections occurred during the first half of Rutherford's tenure, leading to the formation of several Bible Student organizations independent of the Watch Tower Society, the largest of which was the Dawn Bible Students Association. There are varying estimates of how many Bible Students left during Rutherford's tenure, with Alan Rogerson believing the total number to be unclear. By mid-1919, an estimated one in seven of Russell-era Bible Students had ceased their association with the Society. Between 1921 and 1931 three-quarters were estimated to have left. Rutherford enacted several changes under his leadership, many of which are considered "distinctive" to modern Jehovah's Witness beliefs and practices. Some of these changes include advocating for door-to-door preaching, prohibiting celebrations believed to be pagan such as Christmas, the belief that Jesus died on a stake instead of a cross, and a more uniform organizational hierarchy. In 1919, Rutherford instituted the appointment of a director in each congregation, and a year later all members were instructed to report their weekly preaching activity to the Brooklyn headquarters. In 1920, he announced that the Hebrew patriarchs (such as Abraham and Isaac) would be resurrected in 1925, marking the beginning of Christ's thousand-year earthly kingdom. In July 1917, he released The Finished Mystery as a seventh volume to the Studies in the Scriptures series. Rutherford claimed it to be Russell's posthumous work, but it was actually written by Clayton Woodworth, George Fisher, and Gertrude Seibert. It strongly criticized Catholic and Protestant clergy and Christian involvement in the Great War. As a result, Watch Tower Society directors were jailed for sedition under the Espionage Act in 1918 and members were subjected to mob violence; the directors were released in March 1919 and charges against them were dropped in 1920. On July 26, 1931, at a convention in Columbus, Ohio, Rutherford introduced the new name Jehovah's witnesses, based on Isaiah 43:10: "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me" (King James Version). It was adopted by resolution. The name was chosen to distinguish his group of Bible Students from other independent groups that had severed ties with the Society, as well as to symbolize the instigation of new outlooks and the promotion of fresh evangelizing methods. In 1932, Rutherford eliminated the system of locally elected elders. In 1938, he introduced what he called a theocratic organizational system, under which appointments in congregations worldwide were made from the Brooklyn headquarters. Doctrine regarding life after death also evolved under his tenure. In addition to the preexisting belief that there would be 144,000 people to survive Armageddon and live in heaven to rule over earth with Jesus, a separate class of members, the "great multitude", was introduced. This group would live in a paradise restored on earth; from 1935, new converts to the movement were considered part of that class. By the mid-1930s, the timing of the beginning of Jesus' presence, his enthronement as king, and the start of the last days were each moved to 1914. As their interpretations of the Bible evolved, Witness publications decreed that saluting national flags was a form of idolatry, which led to a new outbreak of mob violence and government opposition in various countries. Nathan Knorr was appointed as third president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1942. Knorr organized large international assemblies, instituted new training programs for members, and expanded missionary activity and branch offices worldwide. He also increased the use of explicit instructions guiding Jehovah's Witnesses' lifestyle and conduct as well as a greater use of congregational judicial procedures to enforce a strict moral code. Watch Tower Society literature stopped crediting individual contributors during his tenure, as he believed that recognition should only be given to God. Knorr commissioned a new translation of the Bible, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, the full version of which was released in 1961. Various Bible scholars, including Bruce M. Metzger and MacLean Gilmour, have said that while scholarship is evident in New World Translation, its rendering of certain texts is inaccurate and biased in favor of Witness practices and doctrines. Critics of the group such as Edmund C. Gruss and Christian writers such as Ray C. Stedman, Walter Martin, Norman Klann, and Anthony Hoekema say the New World Translation is scholastically dishonest. Most criticism of the New World Translation relates to its rendering of the New Testament, particularly regarding the introduction of the name Jehovah and in passages related to the Trinity doctrine. The offices of elder and ministerial servant were restored to Witness congregations in 1972. In a major organizational overhaul in 1976, the power of the Watch Tower Society president was diminished, with authority for doctrinal and organizational decisions being passed to the Governing Body. Knorr introduced these changes as he believed that people making spiritual decisions should be "called by Christ" rather than elected. The presidency's role transitioned into heading the denomination's legal entity. The distinction between these roles grew further when all Governing Body members resigned as directors and the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, Inc. was formed in 2000. Since Knorr's death in 1977, the presidency has been held by Frederick Franz, Milton Henschel, Don Alden Adams and Robert Ciranko. From 1966, Witness publications and convention talks built anticipation of the possibility that Jesus' thousand-year reign might begin in 1975 or shortly thereafter. The number of baptisms increased significantly, from about 59,000 in 1966 to more than 297,000 in 1974. By 1975, the number of active members exceeded two million. From 1971 to 1981, there was a net increase of 737,241 publishers worldwide, while baptisms totaled 1.71 million for the same period. Watch Tower Society literature did not say that 1975 would definitely mark the end, though it was strongly implied. Frederick Franz, then–president of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, stated at a 1975 convention that the great tribulation could be expected to start by the end of that year. Many Jehovah's Witnesses acted upon this information by quitting their jobs and preaching more fervently. After that prediction failed, ordinary Jehovah's Witness members were blamed for believing in the date rather than the Governing Body acknowledging responsibility. Membership declined significantly for a few years after the failed prediction. Jehovah's Witnesses have not set any specific dates for the end since 1975. Their publications emphasize that "one cannot know the day or the hour", but they still believe Armageddon to be imminent. Verse 34 of Matthew 24, where Jesus tells his disciples that "this generation will by no means pass away until all these things happen", was interpreted to refer to the generation of people alive in 1914. The initial teaching was that Armageddon would begin before the last person alive during that timeframe had died. The time limit was removed in 1995. This doctrine changed further in 2008, where generation was interpreted to refer to both the original anointed class and their remnant, the latter of which would be alive when Armageddon began. In 2010, the meaning of generation was re-interpreted to include individuals whose lives overlapped with anointed individuals alive during 1914. Organization Jehovah's Witnesses are organized hierarchically, in what the leadership calls a theocratic organization, reflecting their belief that it is God's visible organization on earth. Jehovah's Witnesses establish branch offices to manage their activities in various countries or regions. Each branch office is also referred to as Bethel. Supporting staff live on these properties where they operate as a religious community and administrative unit. Their living expenses and those of other full-time volunteers are covered along with a basic monthly stipend. These volunteers are called Bethelites and are assigned specific tasks such as printing literature or doing laundry. They are allowed to marry but must leave Bethel if they have children. Bethelites are expected to read the Bible cover-to-cover during their first year of service. Consultants are sometimes hired for specialized tasks such as legal advice. Regular Jehovah's Witness members are encouraged to visit Bethel as a recreational activity. Traveling overseers appoint local elders and ministerial servants, while branch offices may appoint regional committees for matters such as Kingdom Hall construction or disaster relief. Each congregation has a body of appointed unpaid male elders and ministerial servants. Elders maintain general responsibility for congregational governance, setting meeting times, selecting speakers and conducting meetings, directing the public preaching work, and creating judicial committees to investigate and decide disciplinary action for cases involving sexual misconduct or doctrinal breaches. New elders are appointed by a traveling overseer after recommendation by the existing body of elders. Ministerial servants—appointed in a similar manner as elders—fulfill clerical and attendant duties, but may also teach and conduct meetings. Jehovah's Witnesses do not use elder as a title to signify a formal clergy-laity division, though elders may employ ecclesiastical privilege regarding confession of sins. Much of the denomination's funding is donated, primarily by members. There is no tithing or collection. In 2001 Newsday listed the Watch Tower Society as one of New York's 40 richest corporations, with revenues exceeding $950 million. In 2016, it ranked eighteenth for donations received by registered charities in Canada at $80 million. From 1969 until 2015, the denomination's headquarters were housed in Brooklyn, with plans to completely move its operations to Warwick in 2017. The property was sold to Kushner Companies for $340 million in 2016. The denomination is led by the Governing Body—an all-male group that varies in size. The Governing Body directs several committees that are responsible for administrative functions, including publishing, assembly programs and evangelizing activities. Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses are established by the Governing Body, which assumes responsibility for interpreting and applying scripture. The Governing Body does not issue a single, comprehensive statement of faith, but expresses its doctrinal positions through publications published by the Watch Tower Society. The publications teach that doctrinal changes and refinements result from a process of progressive revelation, in which God gradually reveals his will and purpose, and that such enlightenment or "new light" results from the application of reason and study. Sociologist Andrew Holden's ethnographic study of the group concluded that pronouncements of the Governing Body, through Watch Tower Society publications, carry almost as much weight as the Bible. The organization makes no provision for members to criticize or contribute to its teachings. Witness publications strongly discourage followers from questioning doctrine and counsel received from the Governing Body, reasoning that it is to be trusted as part of "God's organization". The denomination does not tolerate dissent over doctrines and practices; members who openly disagree with the group's teachings are expelled and shunned. Jehovah's Witnesses have a complementarian view of women. Only men may hold positions of authority, such as ministerial servant or elder. Women may actively participate in the public preaching work, serve at Bethel, and profess to be members of the 144,000. They are not typically allowed to address the congregation directly. In rare circumstances, women can substitute in certain capacities if there are no eligible men. In these situations, women must wear a head covering if they are performing a teaching role. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that transgender people should live as the gender they were assigned at birth and view gender-affirming surgery as mutilation. Modesty in dress and grooming is frequently emphasized for both men and women. Beliefs Jehovah's Witnesses believe their denomination is a restoration of first-century Christianity. They believe that mainstream Christianity departed from true worship over time, that groups such as Cathars attempted to restore some aspects of it, and that the Protestant Reformation "did not go far enough". Older books published by the Watch Tower Society such as those by Charles Russell and Joseph Rutherford are usually unfamiliar to a modern Jehovah's Witness, although some congregations have these publications in their libraries. Jehovah's Witnesses consider the Bible scientifically and historically accurate and reliable and interpret much of it literally, but accept parts of it as symbolic. Jehovah's Witnesses are old Earth creationists. The entire Protestant canon of scripture is considered the inspired, inerrant word of God. Regular personal Bible reading is frequently recommended. Members are discouraged from formulating doctrines and "private ideas" reached through Bible research independent of Watch Tower Society publications and are cautioned against reading other religious literature. Adherents commonly call their body of beliefs "The Truth". Jehovah's Witnesses emphasize the use of God's name, and they prefer the form Jehovah—a vocalization of God's name based on the Tetragrammaton. They believe that Jehovah is the only true god, the creator of all things, and the "Universal Sovereign". They believe that all worship should be directed toward him, and that he is not part of a Trinity; consequently, the group places more emphasis on God than on Christ. They believe that the Holy Spirit is God's applied power or "active force". Jehovah's Witnesses believe that they can have a personal relationship with God. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is God's only direct creation, that everything else was created through him by means of God's power, and that the initial unassisted act of creation uniquely identifies Jesus as God's "only-begotten Son". As part of their nontrinitarian beliefs, they do not believe that Jesus is God the Son. They do believe that he was the first angel, and is the only archangel. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Mary conceived Jesus as a virgin but do not believe that she was born free from sin or that she remained a virgin after his birth. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus served as a redeemer and a ransom sacrifice to atone for original sin. They believe that he died on a single upright post rather than a cross, which they regard as a pagan symbol. Accordingly, they do not use the word "crucifixion" when referring to Jesus' death. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus was resurrected with a "spirit body", and that he assumed human form only temporarily after his resurrection. Biblical references to the Michael, Abaddon (Apollyon), and the Word are interpreted as names for Jesus in various roles. Jesus is considered the only intercessor and high priest between God and humanity, appointed by God as the king and judge of his kingdom. Jehovah's Witnesses believe death is a state of nonexistence with no consciousness. There is no Hell of fiery torment; Hades and Sheol are understood to refer to the condition of death, termed the common grave. They consider the soul a life or a living body that can die. They believe that humanity is in a sinful state, from which release is possible only by means of Jesus' shed blood as a ransom, or atonement, for humankind's sins. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that a "little flock" of 144,000 selected humans go to heaven, but that God will resurrect the majority (the "other sheep") to a cleansed earth after Armageddon. They interpret Revelation 14:1–5 to mean that the number of Christians going to heaven is limited to exactly 144,000, who will rule with Jesus as kings and priests over earth. They believe that baptism as a Jehovah's Witness is vital for salvation, and do not recognize baptism from other denominations as valid. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that some people who died before Armageddon will be resurrected, taught the proper way to worship God, and then face a final test at the end of the millennial reign. This judgment will be based on their actions after resurrection rather than past deeds. At the end of the thousand years, Jesus will hand all authority back to God. Then a final test will take place when Satan is released to mislead humankind. Those who fail will die, along with Satan and his demons. They also believe that those who rejected their beliefs while still alive will not be resurrected. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Satan was originally a perfect angel who developed feelings of self-importance and craved worship. Satan influenced Adam and Eve to disobey God, and humanity subsequently became participants in a challenge involving the competing claims of Jehovah and Satan to universal sovereignty. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus began to rule invisibly in heaven as king of God's kingdom in October 1914 and that Satan was subsequently ousted from heaven to the earth. They base this belief on a rendering of the Greek word parousia—usually translated as "coming" when referring to Jesus—as "presence". Jehovah's Witnesses believe that they are the kingdom's representatives on earth. They also believe that they must remain separate from human governments, which they consider to be controlled by Satan. The kingdom is viewed as the means by which God will accomplish his original purpose for the earth, transforming it into a paradise without sickness or death. Jehovah's Witnesses do not currently suggest any specific date for the end of the world, but Watch Tower Society literature has previously made such statements about 1914, 1925 and 1975. These failed predictions were presented as "beyond doubt" and "approved by God". Some Watch Tower Society publications state that God has used Jehovah's Witnesses and the International Bible Students as a modern-day prophet.[en 2] A central teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses is that the world faces imminent destruction through intervention by God and Jesus Christ. This belief has been present since the group's founding. They believe that Jesus' inauguration as king in 1914 is a sign that the great tribulation is about to take place. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that all other present-day religions are false, identifying them with Babylon the Great, the "harlot" of Revelation 17. They believe that Nebuchadnezzar II had a dream where he saw a statue with a gold head, silver chest and arms, copper abdomen, iron legs, and feet that were a mixture of clay and iron. This dream is interpreted as a prophecy representing the rise and fall of empires: gold represents Babylon, silver represents Persia, copper represents Greece, iron represents Rome, and clay represents an Anglo-American empire. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that humanity is currently living in the last empire that will eventually be destroyed by the United Nations, which is also interpreted as the scarlet-colored wild beast. Satan will subsequently use world governments to attack Jehovah's Witnesses, which will prompt God to begin the war of Armageddon, during which all forms of human government will be destroyed and all people not counted as Jesus' sheep will be killed. After Armageddon, God will extend his heavenly kingdom to include earth, which will be transformed into a paradise like the Garden of Eden. They thus depart from the mainstream Christian belief that the "second coming" of Matthew 24 refers to a single moment of arrival on earth to judge humans. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that dating should only occur if the couple is seriously considering marriage. Dating outside the denomination is strongly discouraged and can lead to religious sanctions. Dating Jehovah's Witnesses are encouraged to have a chaperone when they are together to avoid acting on sexual desires. All sexual relations outside marriage are grounds for expulsion if the person is not deemed repentant; homosexual activity is considered a serious sin, and same-sex marriage is forbidden. Masturbation is also prohibited. Jehovah's Witnesses may marry at a Kingdom Hall in a simple ceremony and practices considered pagan such as wishing good luck or throwing rice are prohibited. An elder will give a talk to the congregation. Once married, a husband is considered to have spiritual headship over his wife, unless he is not one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Contraception is allowed. Divorce is forbidden if not sought on the grounds of adultery, which is called a "scriptural divorce". If a divorce is obtained for any other reason, remarriage is considered adulterous unless the former spouse has died or is considered to have committed sexual immorality. Spouses may separate in cases of domestic violence. Jehovah's Witness households are expected to have a family worship session each week. Practices Baptism is considered a requirement for salvation. Baptisms performed by other denominations are not considered valid. Before being baptized, a member will become an unbaptized publisher. Jehovah's Witnesses do not practice infant baptism but allow children to be baptized as long as they meet the same requirements as other candidates. To qualify for baptism, an individual must correctly answer more than a hundred questions about their own lifestyle and the denomination's beliefs. Individuals undergoing baptism are directed to affirm publicly that their dedication and baptism identifies each "as one of Jehovah's Witnesses in association with God's spirit-directed organization," though Witness publications say baptism symbolizes personal dedication to God and not "to a man, work or organization." Meetings for worship and study are held at Kingdom Halls, which are typically functional in character, and do not contain religious symbols. Witnesses are assigned to a congregation in whose "territory" they usually reside and attend weekly services they call "meetings", scheduled by congregation elders. The meetings are largely devoted to study of Watch Tower Society literature and the Bible. Jehovah's Witnesses have "considerable worldwide uniformity", as all congregations study the same materials on a schedule. Outsiders are encouraged to attend. Historically, congregations met three times each week, but since 2009 meet for two sessions each week: one on a weekday and one on a weekend. Jehovah's Witnesses are expected to study the assigned material before attending. Children also attend meetings and do not have separate arrangements such as Sunday School. Gatherings are opened and closed with hymns called Kingdom songs and brief prayers. A Kingdom Hall may have multiple congregations that share the building. In 2014, decisions about which congregations would share a Kingdom Hall or whether additional Kingdom Halls should be built was transferred from individual congregations to the nearest branch office. After this change, many Kingdom Halls were sold. Twice each year, Jehovah's Witnesses from a number of congregations that form a "circuit" gather for a one-day assembly. Larger groups of congregations meet annually for a three-day "regional convention", usually at an Assembly Hall built for this purpose. Rented stadiums or auditoriums are sometimes used instead. New members are baptized at these conventions. Jehovah's Witnesses consider their most important annual event to be the Memorial, which is observed on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan during Passover, and members advertise the event to outsiders. Unleavened bread and red wine is passed between attendees, but only those who consider themselves to be anointed partake (often with no one in attendance partaking), and a talk is given about the event's significance. Jehovah's Witnesses are known for their efforts to spread their beliefs, distributing Watch Tower Society literature. The objective is to start a regular "Bible study" with anyone who is not already a member, with the intention that the student be baptized as a member of the group; members are advised to consider discontinuing Bible study with students who show no interest in becoming members. While Jehovah's Witnesses are well known for visiting people's homes, they have a variety of preaching methods. Literature carts were introduced in 2012, where Jehovah's Witnesses stay in a public place and wait for people to approach them. Methods usually undertaken by those physically unable to engage in the door-to-door ministry include calling people by phone and writing letters. Jehovah's Witnesses are sometimes confused with Mormon missionaries. Converts as a result of their door-to-door evangelism are rare and happen at a rate comparable with other denominations that practice similar preaching methods. Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that they are under a biblical command to engage in public preaching and often do so by working in pairs. They are instructed to devote as much time as possible to their ministry, and to submit a monthly "Field Service Report". Those who do not submit reports for six consecutive months are termed "inactive". Children also preach. Until 2023, every active Jehovah's Witness was expected to submit the number of hours they spent preaching in their monthly field service report. In November 2023, this requirement was modified to only apply to members who have agreed to a specific hour requirement. As of 2025, auxiliary pioneers preach for 30 hours, regular pioneers preach for 50 hours per month; special pioneers preach for 100 hours each month, often in remote or under-represented areas, and receive a stipend to help pay for their living expenses. Other members are only required to indicate they engaged in some form of ministry during the month, along with any Bible studies they conducted. In 2025, Jehovah's Witnesses conducted about 7.6 million Bible studies (including studies conducted with their own children), and approximately 304,500 new members were baptized. The denomination produces a significant amount of literature as part of its evangelism activities. In 2010, The Watchtower and Awake! were the world's most widely distributed magazines. Jehovah's Witnesses consider their literature to be "spiritual food" and provide it to interested parties for free. The group launched its first website in 1997: watchtower.org. In 2008, it was replaced with jw.org. Their website is often referenced in their evangelism, with its logo appearing in literature displays and outside Kingdom Halls. An increased reliance on electronic media has reduced their printing costs. The denomination archives most of its literature online, although certain entries have been changed after publication. It also offers a streaming service called JW Broadcasting. An animated series aimed at children has been produced called "Become Jehovah's Friend". An application, JW Language, has been designed to facilitate preaching with people who speak different languages. A specialized device for use in areas with limited internet access offers downloaded materials relevant to Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses require individuals to be baptized by the denomination in order to be subject to their disciplinary procedures. The denomination does not tolerate dissent over doctrines and practices; members who openly disagree with the group's teachings are expelled, shunned, and condemned as apostates who are "mentally diseased". Some adherents "fade" and stop attending meetings without being formally subjected to the group's disciplinary procedures, although some former members have still experienced shunning through this method. Members accused of persistent wrongdoing are brought to the attention of the elders who will then evaluate possible consequences. Members who have violated the group's standards—for example, dating a non-member—but not otherwise committed a serious sin may be "marked". Congregation members who are aware of another member's errant behaviour are advised to limit social contact with the marked individual. Elders may decide to form a committee in cases involving serious sin, which may result in the member being reproved or shunned. This process requires three elders to meet with the accused. These cases usually involve sexual misconduct or apostasy. Other serious sins involve accepting blood transfusions (which does not require a judicial committee), smoking, using recreational drugs, divorce (unless a spouse committed adultery), celebration of holidays or birthdays, abortion (which is considered murder), and political activities such as voting in elections. Procedures related to congregational discipline are primarily described in the book, Shepherd the Flock of God, provided only to elders. People who formally leave Jehovah's Witnesses are considered to be disassociated and are also shunned. Jehovah's Witnesses can also be disassociated for accepting a blood transfusion. The practice of shunning may serve to deter other members from dissident behavior. Shunning also helps maintain a "uniformity of belief". Shunned individuals may experience suicidal ideation and often struggle with feelings of low self esteem, shame, and guilt. Former members may experience significant mental distress as a result of being shunned and some seek reinstatement to maintain contact with their friends and family. Former members may also experience ambiguous loss or panic attacks. Expelled individuals may eventually be reinstated to the congregation if deemed repentant by congregation elders, and some seek reinstatement to maintain contact with their friends and family. Reinstatement can be a long process, which may be mentally and emotionally draining. Funerals for expelled members may not be performed at Kingdom Halls. Baptized children are also subject to the same moral standards and consequences for failing to comply. They are allowed to stay with their families until reaching the age of majority. Jehovah's Witnesses lost state funding as a religious community in Norway because of its shunning policy, with the country concluding that shunning, particularly of children, constitutes psychological violence. Subsequently, the group made some changes to its shunning policy in 2024; individuals may offer "simple greetings" to shunned members instead of completely avoiding them if the individual is not deemed to be an apostate. As of 2024, two elders may have a more informal meeting with a minor who is considered to have committed a "serious sin" along with his or her parents before deciding whether a formal committee meeting is required. Parents are also no longer prohibited from attending judicial committees with minors. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Bible condemns mixing religions, on the basis that there can only be one truth from God, and therefore reject interfaith and ecumenical movements. They believe that only Jehovah's Witnesses represent true Christianity and that other denominations do not meet God's requirements; all other Christian denominations (collectively referred to as "Christendom") along with all other religions are considered "false religion". Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that it is vital to remain "separate from the world." Their literature defines the "world" as "the mass of mankind apart from Jehovah's approved servants" and teach that it is morally contaminated and ruled by Satan. Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that association with "worldly" people presents a danger to their faith. For many years, the Watch Tower Society has stated that secondary education is "spiritually dangerous" as it requires extended association with those outside the group. The denomination has also presented further education as unnecessary in view of their belief that Armageddon is imminent. Trade schools are suggested as an alternative. Adolescent Jehovah's Witnesses are also encouraged to become Bethelites. In 2025, the view of higher education was adjusted, with a statement that, "While there are dangers involved in pursuing certain forms of education, basically, whether to obtain additional education or not is a matter for personal decision," and that, "no Christian—including the elders—should judge a fellow Christian's personal decision on this matter." Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, nor do they observe birthdays, national holidays, or other celebrations they consider to honor people other than Jesus. They believe that these and many other customs have pagan origins or reflect nationalistic spirit. Members are told that spontaneous giving at other times can help their children to not feel deprived of birthdays or other celebrations. Wedding anniversaries are allowed. Jehovah's Witnesses are not permitted to work in industries associated with the military and refuse national military service, which in some countries may result in their arrest and imprisonment. They also refuse to salute flags or participate in patriotic activities. Adherents see themselves as a worldwide brotherhood that transcends national boundaries and ethnic loyalties. Jehovah's Witnesses are often viewed as being without agency or brainwashed by the anti-cult movement. Andrew Holden believes that most members who join millenarian movements such as Jehovah's Witnesses have made an informed choice, but that defectors "are seldom allowed a dignified exit", and describes the administration as autocratic. Sociologist Rodney Stark believes that Jehovah's Witness leaders are "not always very democratic" and that members "are expected to conform to rather strict standards," but adds that "enforcement tends to be very informal, sustained by the close bonds of friendship within the group", and that members see themselves as "part of the power structure rather than subject to it." After the publication in 1984 of The Elementary Forms of New Religious Life, academics began to describe various new religious movements as either world-affirming, world-accommodating, or world-rejecting. Jehovah's Witnesses were labelled as world-rejecting. Sociologist Bryan R. Wilson believed that Jehovah's Witnesses conflict with society at large, impose "tests of merit on would-be members", have strict disciplinary procedures, and expect absolute commitment. Sociologist Ronald Lawson has suggested that the group's intellectual and organizational isolation, coupled with the intense indoctrination of adherents, rigid internal discipline, and considerable persecution, has contributed to the consistency of its sense of urgency in its apocalyptic message. Alan Rogerson describes the group's leadership as totalitarian, while historian James Irvin Lichti [de] rejects this interpretation. James A. Beckford, a sociologist of religion, classified the group's organizational structure as totalizing, with assertive leadership, specific and narrow objectives, control over competing demands on members' time and energy, and control over the quality of new members. Other characteristics of the classification include likelihood of friction with secular authorities, reluctance to cooperate with other religious organizations, a high rate of membership turnover, a low rate of doctrinal change, and strict uniformity of beliefs among members. Beckford also identified the group's chief characteristics as historicism (identifying historical events as relating to the outworking of God's purpose), absolutism (conviction that Jehovah's Witness leaders dispense absolute truth), activism (capacity to motivate members to perform missionary tasks), rationalism (conviction that Witness doctrines have a rational basis devoid of mystery), authoritarianism (rigid presentation of regulations without the opportunity for criticism) and world indifference (rejection of certain secular requirements and medical treatments). Former members Heather Botting and Gary Botting compare the cultural paradigms of the denomination to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Critics believe that by disparaging individual decision-making, the group's leaders cultivate a system of unquestioning obedience in which members abrogate responsibility and rights over their personal lives. Critics also accuse the group's leaders of exercising "intellectual dominance" over adherents, controlling information, and creating "mental isolation", which former Governing Body member Raymond Franz argued were all elements of mind control. Some Jehovah's Witnesses describe themselves to academics as "Physically In, Mentally Out" (PIMO); these individuals privately question certain doctrine but remain inside the organization to maintain contact with their friends and family. Jehovah's Witnesses typically refuse blood transfusions, which they consider a violation of God's law based on their interpretation of Acts 15:28, 29 and other scriptures. This prohibition has existed since 1945. They also do not eat blood-based foods, such as blood sausage. Since 1961, acceptance of a blood transfusion without subsequent repentance has been grounds for expulsion from the group. Members are directed to refuse blood transfusions, even in "a life-or-death situation". Their literature implies that there is a blood alternative for every medical situation and "emphasizes the danger of blood transfusions". Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept the transfusion of "whole blood, packed red cells, platelets, white cells or plasma". Autologous blood donation, where one's blood is stored for later use, is also considered unacceptable. Members may accept some blood plasma fractions at their own discretion. Some Jehovah's Witnesses may accept prohibited blood products if medical confidentiality is upheld, although Jehovah's Witnesses who work in a hospital may break such confidentiality. Jehovah's Witness patients are generally open to non-blood alternative treatments, even if they are less effective. Courts have intervened in life-threatening situations involving children that require blood transfusions to allow the treatment to take place. Courts may allow mature minors to reject blood transfusions based on their beliefs. The May 22, 1994, issue of Awake! entitled Youths Who Put God First featured children who refused blood transfusions and subsequently died. The Watch Tower Society provides pre-formatted durable power of attorney documents prohibiting major blood components, in which members can specify which allowable fractions and treatments they will accept. The denomination has established Hospital Liaison Committees as a cooperative arrangement between individual Jehovah's Witness members and medical professionals and hospitals to provide information about bloodless treatment options. Patients who accept certain blood products in the committee's presence are deemed to have disassociated and are shunned. The National Secular Society advocates against hospitals partnering with hospital liaison committees due to medical coercion. Jehovah's Witnesses have been accused of having policies and culture that help to conceal cases of sexual abuse within the organization. When investigating cases of child abuse, elders are instructed to immediately call the organization's headquarters or branch office. The group states that this requirement is to ensure compliance with the law. An investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation determined that elders were asked questions such as, "How many elders believe the victim is to blame or willingly participated in the act?" Jehovah's Witnesses have been criticized for the "two witness rule" for congregational discipline, based on an application of scriptures in Deuteronomy 19:15 and Matthew 18:15–17, which requires sexual abuse to be substantiated by secondary evidence if the accused person denies wrongdoing. In cases where corroboration is lacking, the Watch Tower Society's instruction is that "the elders will leave the matter in Jehovah's hands". A former member has said that the policy effectively requires that there be third-party witness to an act of molestation, "which is an impossibility". Jehovah's Witnesses maintain a database of confidential files in regards to child abuse, which are marked as "Do Not Destroy". An elder in New Zealand was tasked with destroying "personal notes" in their database when the organization was under investigation for child abuse. In the United States, the group was fined four-thousand dollars daily (accruing a total of two million dollars) for delaying an order to provide its documentation. The group's failure to report abuse allegations to authorities has also been criticized. The Watch Tower Society's policy is that elders inform authorities when required by law to do so, but otherwise leave that up to the victim and their family. In jurisdictions with priest–penitent privilege, confessions of abuse may be considered confidential. William Bowen, a former Jehovah's Witness elder who established the Silentlambs organization to assist sex abuse victims in the denomination, has claimed that Witness leaders discourage followers from reporting incidents of sexual misconduct to authorities. Other critics have alleged that the organization is reluctant to alert authorities to protect its "crime-free" reputation. However, in response to the charge that their policies "protect pedophiles rather than protect the children", the organization has maintained that the best way to protect children is to educate parents; they also say they do not sponsor activities that separate children from parents. In court cases in the United Kingdom and the United States, the Watch Tower Society has been found negligent in its protection of children from known sex offenders within the congregation. The Society has settled other child abuse lawsuits out of court, paying $780,000 in one case. In 2015, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that "there was no evidence before the Royal Commission of the Jehovah's Witness organisation having or not having reported to police any of the 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse identified by the organisation since 1950." The Royal Commission also found that the Watch Tower Society legal department routinely provided incorrect information to elders based on an incorrect understanding of what constitutes a legal obligation to report crimes in Australia. In 2017, the Charity Commission for England and Wales began an inquiry into Jehovah's Witnesses' handling of allegations of child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom.[needs update] In 2021, Jehovah's Witnesses in Australia agreed to join the nation's redress scheme for sexual assault survivors to maintain its charity status there. Government interactions Controversy about various beliefs, doctrines and practices of Jehovah's Witnesses has led to opposition from governments, communities, and other religious groups. Religious commentator Ken Jubber wrote, "Viewed globally, this persecution has been so persistent and of such intensity that it would not be inaccurate to regard Jehovah's Witnesses as the most persecuted group of Christians of the twentieth century." Several cases involving Jehovah's Witnesses have been heard by Supreme Courts worldwide. They generally relate to the right to practice their religion, displays of patriotism and military service, and blood transfusions. Cases in their favor have been heard in the United States, Canada and many European countries. Political and religious animosity toward Jehovah's Witnesses has at times led to mob action and government oppression in various countries. Their political neutrality and refusal to serve in the military has led to imprisonment of members who refused conscription during World War II and other periods of compulsory national service, especially in countries that do not provide religious exemptions. Their religious activities are banned or restricted in some countries, including China, Russia, Vietnam, and many Muslim-majority countries. In 1931, the Australian government monitored radio broadcasts of Rutherford's sermons as they had received complaints about anti-Catholic rhetoric. The religious group became especially unpopular after 1940 due to their political neutrality in the second world war, prompting people to write to government officials about the names and addresses of known members. In 1941, Jehovah's Witnesses became an illegal organization. Various groups supported the ban, which caused political pressure to enforce it; Member of Parliament Maurice Blackburn opposed a ban, believing it to be caused by religious intolerance. Once the ban was enacted, the assets of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society were seized by the government. Witness homes were raided to confiscate their religious literature. Despite these measures, Jehovah's Witnesses continued their activities. The ban was overturned in 1943 when the High Court concluded that these restrictions violated the constitution. In the early 1900s, radio stations were operated by congregations in Saskatoon, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto. In 1927, the federal government minister responsible for radio licensing, Arthur Cardin, revoked the licenses for these radio stations because they shared airspace with the Ku Klux Klan in Canada. According to Gary Botting, this "strange alliance" was formed due to a mutual opposition against the Roman Catholic church. In response, Rutherford bought airtime from other radio stations. When Hector Charlesworth banned this activity as well, he was "indirectly attacked" in an issue of the Golden Age and Jehovah's Witnesses launched a petition to regain their licenses that resulted in 406,270 signatures. Charlesworth's actions were debated by the House of Commons in 1933. While multiple members expressed concern that this prohibition was censorship of free speech, the ban was not lifted. In 1940, a year after Canada entered World War II, the denomination itself was banned under the War Measures Act as a subversive organization. This ban continued until 1943. A separate ban on the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was not lifted until 1945. More than 100,000 dollars in assets were seized by the Canadian government and tonnes of literature produced by the group were confiscated. Hundreds of adherents were prosecuted as members of an illegal organization. Jehovah's Witnesses were interned in camps along with political dissidents and people of Chinese and Japanese descent. During this period, many Jehovah's Witness children were expelled from school, while others were placed in foster homes or juvenile detention. After the ban was lifted, men who had been jailed tried to apply for an ordained minister exemption without success. This led to a legal case being filed, R. v. Stewart, which ruled that Jehovah's Witnesses were participants in a "commercial undertaking" and did not qualify as ministers. A similar outcome was reached in Greenlees v. A.G. Canada, where the judge decided that Jehovah's Witnesses could not be ministers because they considered every member to be one and that they did not have an organizational structure independent of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Jehovah's Witnesses faced discrimination in Quebec until the Quiet Revolution, including bans on distributing literature or holding meetings. Roncarelli v Duplessis was a 1959 legal case heard by the Supreme Court of Canada. The court held that in 1946 Maurice Duplessis, Premier and Attorney General of Quebec, had overstepped his authority by ordering the manager of the Liquor Commission to revoke the liquor licence of Frank Roncarelli, a Montreal restaurant owner and Jehovah's Witness who was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec. Roncarelli provided bail for Jehovah's Witnesses arrested for distributing pamphlets attacking the Roman Catholic Church. The Supreme Court found Duplessis liable for $33,000 in damages plus Roncarelli's court costs. Another legal case heard that year was Lamb v Benoit, where a Jehovah's Witness woman was arrested for distributing religious pamphlets. Jehovah's Witnesses are banned in China. Missionaries like Amber Scorah were sent there to preach clandestinely. During the Cuban Revolution and its aftermath, Jehovah's Witnesses became one of the largest religious groups in Cuba. Despite initially cordial relations with the government, led by Fidel Castro, attempts made to suppress religious groups became apparent. In 1962, the Cuban Ministry of Communications [es] imposed restrictions on the distribution of Jehovah's Witnesses' literature. According to the 1963 Witness Yearbook, arrests for preaching increased in 1962. The following year, foreign missionaries were exiled and hundreds of Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested for holding public and private gatherings without permission from local authorities. In 1965, the Cuban government banned the Cuban Watch Tower Society. This marked the beginning of heightened hostility towards Jehovah's Witnesses, who began to face legal repercussions for refusing to salute the flag or serve in the military when conscripted. Military Units to Aid Production were established by the government to isolate groups deemed to be "deviant" or "undesirable", including Jehovah's Witnesses. Those who refused military conscription were typically sentenced to one to six years in these camps. A 1966 report documented instances of torture and murder of Witnesses by the government agents who worked at these camps. Despite the repercussions, Jehovah's Witnesses remained persistent in their activism. This ultimately prompted the Cuban government to officially ban the sect on July 1, 1974. The 1976 Constitution reaffirmed the ruling. Religious groups must be registered in order to legally worship in Eritrea. Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as other Christian and Muslim groups, have been refused this legal recognition. Jehovah's Witnesses have been imprisoned for their refusal to perform military service and for attending religious services. Jehovah's Witnesses were officially registered as a religious group in France in 1947. In 1995, they were designated as a "dangerous sect" by French law. In 1999, the country demanded back taxes on donations to the religious group's organization from 1993 and 1996, which would have been €57.5 million. This tax ruling was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights on June 30, 2011. In 1933, there were approximately 20,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany, of whom about 10,000 were imprisoned. Jehovah's Witnesses suffered religious persecution by the Nazis because they refused military service and allegiance to Hitler's National Socialist Party. Of those, 2,000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps, where they were identified by purple triangles; as many as 1,200 died, including 250 who were executed. They were hanged, beheaded, beaten to death, or shot dead. Conditions for Jehovah's Witnesses improved in 1942, when they were increasingly given work details that required little supervision, such as farming, gardening, transportation and unloading goods, while others worked in civilian clothing in a health resort, as housekeepers for Nazi officials, or were given construction and craft tasks at military buildings. Unlike Jews and Romani, who were persecuted on the basis of their ethnicity, Jehovah's Witnesses could escape persecution and personal harm by signing a document indicating renunciation of their faith, submission to state authority, and support of the German military. Historian Sybil Milton writes, "their courage and defiance in the face of torture and death punctures the myth of a monolithic Nazi state ruling over docile and submissive subjects." Jehovah's Witnesses would preach inside the concentration camps, hold meetings, and smuggle in their religious literature. Approximately 800 children of Jehovah's Witnesses were taken away from their families. Witness children typically expressed defiance to the Nazi regime's attempts to make them act against their beliefs. They were often expelled from public schools due to their refusal to say "Heil Hitler". Some children were sent to reeducation centers, while others were adopted by families in good standing with the Nazi regime. In East Germany, from the 1950s to the 1980s, Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted extensively by the Stasi, which frequently used decomposition methods against them. Jehovah's Witnesses were considered a threat because their beliefs did not conform to socialist standards and their members sometimes had contact with the West. Greece had a ban on public evangelism in the 1930s. Approximately 60 Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned for violating this law. The case was eventually appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, who ruled in favour of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1993. This decision also benefited other religious groups in the country. In Japan, following the publication of Shūkyō nisei-related guidelines, a survey was conducted about child abuse within Jehovah's Witnesses, the results of which were forwarded to the government. Ninety-two percent of 583 respondents reported that they had experienced physical abuse as children. The lawyer's group conducting the survey believed this to be evidence of systemic religious abuse. Norway provides state subsidies to religious communities, with some restrictions. Although Jehovah's Witnesses qualified for more than thirty years, they did not receive this funding in Oslo and Viken in 2022. The decision was appealed and upheld by the Ministry of Children and Families. In 2023, Jehovah's Witnesses were fully deregistered as a religious community in Norway as a result of their shunning practice. The Supreme Court ruled that religious communities can determine who can be members but that restrictions on additional funding are acceptable. Therefore, the organization no longer receives 1.3 million euros each year in state subsidies. The denomination's deregistration also means that they lost the right to perform civil marriages. The director of Human Rights Without Frontiers believes that by deregistering Jehovah's Witnesses, Norway is interfering with the group's religious freedom. In April 1951, about 9,300 Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union were deported to Siberia as part of Operation North. In April 2017, the Supreme Court of Russia labeled Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist organization, banned its activities in Russia, and issued an order to confiscate its assets. During British colonial rule in 1941, Watch Tower Society literature was banned in Singapore due to Jehovah's Witnesses' continued refusal to enlist in the Allied Forces during World War II. The group was officially registered as a society in 1960 under the Societies Ordinance Act of 1890. While freedom of religion is constitutionally protected in post-independence Singapore, Jehovah's Witnesses continue to face restrictions, especially where conscription is concerned. In 1972, the group was deregistered for being "prejudicial to public welfare and order", with their refusal of mandatory military service cited as a key concern. Since then, male adherents who reject enlistment, typically about six individuals each year, are imprisoned under the Enlistment Act 1970 as conscientious objection is not recognized. However, they do not receive permanent criminal records, and are usually assigned tasks such as cooking, gardening and laundry in lieu of military activities for about two years. South Korea did not have a religious exemption for military service until 2018, which led to more than 19,000 Jehovah's Witnesses being imprisoned there. In the United States, legal challenges by Jehovah's Witnesses prompted a series of state and federal court rulings that reinforced judicial protections for civil liberties. Among the rights strengthened by Witness court victories in the US are the protection of religious conduct from federal and state interference, the right to abstain from patriotic rituals and military service, the right of patients to refuse medical treatment, and the right to engage in public discourse. Authors including William Whalen, Shawn Francis Peters and former members Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Alan Rogerson, and William Schnell have claimed the arrests and mob violence in the 1930s and 1940s were the consequence of what appeared to be a deliberate course of provocation of authorities and other religious groups by Jehovah's Witnesses. Harrison, Schnell, and Whalen have suggested Rutherford invited and cultivated opposition for publicity purposes in a bid to attract dispossessed members of society, and to convince members that persecution by the outside world was evidence of the truth of their struggle to serve God. In 1943, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that requiring students to salute the flag was a violation of their First Amendment rights. See also Explanatory notes References Sources External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_services] | [TOKENS: 927] |
Contents Financial services Financial services are economic services tied to finance provided by financial institutions. Financial services encompass a broad range of service sector activities, especially as concerns financial management and consumer finance. The terms finance industry and financial services industry in their most common sense concern commercial banks that provide market liquidity, risk instruments, and brokerage for large public companies and multinational corporations at a macroeconomic scale that impacts domestic politics and foreign relations. The extragovernmental power and scale of the finance industry remains an ongoing controversy in many industrialized Western economies, as seen in the American Occupy Wall Street civil protest movement of 2011. Styles of financial institutions include credit union, bank, savings and loan association, trust company, building society, brokerage firm, payment processor, many types of broker, and some government-sponsored enterprise. Financial services include accountancy, investment banking, investment management, and personal asset management, while financial products include insurance, credit cards, mortgage loans, and pension funds. History The term "financial services" became more prevalent in the United States partly as a result of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of the late 1990s, which enabled different types of companies operating in the U.S. financial services industry at that time to merge. Companies usually have two distinct approaches to this new type of business. One approach would be a bank that simply buys an insurance company or an investment bank, keeps the original brands of the acquired firm, and adds the acquisition to its holding company simply to diversify its earnings. Outside the U.S. (e.g. Japan), non-financial services companies are permitted within the holding company. In this scenario, each company still looks independent and has its own customers, etc. In the other style, a bank would simply create its own insurance division or brokerage division and attempt to sell those products to its own existing customers, with incentives for combining all things with one company.[citation needed] Relationship to the government The financial sector is traditionally among those to receive government support in times of widespread economic crisis. Such bailouts, however, enjoy less public support than those for other industries. Banks A commercial bank is what is commonly referred to as simply a bank. The term "commercial" is used to distinguish it from an investment bank, a type of financial services entity which instead of lending money directly to a business, helps businesses raise money from other firms in the form of bonds (debt) or share capital (equity). The primary operations of commercial banks include: The United States is the largest commercial banking services location.[citation needed] New York City and London are the largest centers of investment banking services. NYC is dominated by U.S. domestic business, while in London international business and commerce make up a significant portion of investment banking activity. Foreign exchange services FX or Foreign exchange services are provided by many banks and specialists foreign exchange brokers around the world. Foreign exchange services include: London handled 36.7% of global currency transactions in 2009[update] – an average daily turnover of US$1.85 trillion – with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more Euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined. Investment services New York City is the largest center of investment services, followed by London. Insurance The United States, followed by Japan and the United Kingdom are the largest insurance markets in the world. Other financial services Financial exports A financial export is a financial service provided by a domestic firm (regardless of ownership) to a foreign firm or individual. While financial services such as banking, insurance, and investment management are often seen as domestic services, an increasing proportion of financial services are now being handled abroad, in other financial centres, for a variety of reasons. Some smaller financial centres, such as Bermuda, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands, lack sufficient size for a domestic financial services sector and have developed a role providing services to non-residents as offshore financial centres. The increasing competitiveness of financial services has meant that some countries, such as Japan, which were once self-sufficient, have increasingly imported financial services.[citation needed] The leading financial exporter, in terms of exports less imports, is the United Kingdom, which had $95 billion of financial exports in 2014. The UK's position is helped by both unique institutions (such as Lloyd's of London for insurance, the Baltic Exchange for shipping etc.) and an environment that attracts foreign firms; many international corporations have global or regional headquarters in the London and are listed on the London Stock Exchange, and many banks and other financial institutions operate there or in Edinburgh. See also References Further reading External links |
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